A downloaded PDF file from Firefox is the same if the file is downloaded using Chrome. Why is this and how can I change it? I need them to be the same.
For work, I use Nuance Power PDF 3rd party software for editing and making changes to PDF files that I download to my hard drive. The company normally requires us to use Google Chrome for our work, but recently Chrome has been constantly failing, cannot keep up, and crashes on big files. I started using Firefox and it works great! It's very fast and download what I need 98% faster. However, there is a difference in the PDF's between Firefox and Chrome. When I use the file with Chrome I can highlight and makes corrections with the software, but when I download the exact same file through Firefox I cannot make the same changes at all. The software I use is not made just for Chrome, It does have a Firefox extension which is turned on. I was told by my boss that something is different between the Firefox and Chrome. I have gone through Firefox PDF printer settings and no matter what I do, it's the same issue. Is there a way to change how the Firefox version is different?
Solution choisie
Sorry, I thought you were downloading a PDF provided by the server, I didn't realize you were printing a web page to PDF.
When Firefox prints a page that uses custom web fonts for a large portion of the page (and in certain other circumstances), it will usually will print as an image. This gives the best fidelity for printing on paper, but unfortunately, it means that a PDF printer driver captures a sequence of full page images and there are no individually editable elements in the file.
So here is where an extension could be useful. For example, Adobe's Create PDF extension will convert the currently displayed web page directly to PDF without going through Firefox's print function. (By directly, I mean that it uses Acrobat code to do the conversion, not Firefox's code.) I don't know whether Nuance's extension can do that. If it has a toolbar button, you could check there for a conversion option.
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Hi Matt_Gill, I'm not sure the Nuance browser extension can help you in Firefox. By default, Firefox will display PDFs in its built-in PDF viewer in a tab. This viewer has no editing ability at all, and extensions cannot inject changes into it.
In order to edit the PDF, you likely will need to load it in your Nuance software (outside of Firefox). Here are two possible ways to do that:
(A) Use the download button in the viewer (on the black toolbar) to launch the PDF in your software --
(B) Set Firefox to open PDFs in Nuance automatically, instead of previewing them in a tab. This article has the steps:
View PDF files in Firefox or choose another viewer
Any luck? Bear in mind that opening a PDF directly using either of those options may open it from the TEMP folder. Make sure to save your changes to a safer location, such as your Documents folder.
Thank you for your response, but unfortunately this has not fixed our issue. We use a web based program, Quick Base, when I select Print on the page it pre-downloads the files and then allows me to select how I wish to Print the document. I will choose to save it as a PDF and then it finishes the download. (See the image) None of the Properties that I've changed have made any changes.
Solution choisie
Sorry, I thought you were downloading a PDF provided by the server, I didn't realize you were printing a web page to PDF.
When Firefox prints a page that uses custom web fonts for a large portion of the page (and in certain other circumstances), it will usually will print as an image. This gives the best fidelity for printing on paper, but unfortunately, it means that a PDF printer driver captures a sequence of full page images and there are no individually editable elements in the file.
So here is where an extension could be useful. For example, Adobe's Create PDF extension will convert the currently displayed web page directly to PDF without going through Firefox's print function. (By directly, I mean that it uses Acrobat code to do the conversion, not Firefox's code.) I don't know whether Nuance's extension can do that. If it has a toolbar button, you could check there for a conversion option.
Thank you jscher2000! I found out that Adobe Create PDF has actually not been available since 2017, and they stopped supporting several Add-on's, but I was able to use Print to PDF Add-on, and it does what I need it to. It even allows me to manage my margin sizes, which is really big! Thank you again!!
As a footnote, Adobe renamed its Create PDF extension to Adobe Acrobat at some point. It is provided with Acrobat DC and Acrobat 2017. (Maybe it was also provided to Acrobat XI customers but support ended for that version a while ago.)