I-Firefox Community Forum

Starting a couple of weeks ago I haven't been able to open PDFs in my Firefox browser. Although there are other pdf viewers, Firefox has features that I use that the others don't. I've tried all the various ideas I've found elsewhere online but none worked. I submitted a ticket to our IT helpdesk, but they say it's a Mozilla Firefox issue. The error message isn't helpful at all, considering there is no web server involved.

I get the error below:

Access to the file was denied

Firefox can’t connect to the server at local file What can you do about it?

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website’s administrator about the problem.

I was having an issue with pdfs on firefox; all my pdfs were showing up as black. To fix that, I refreshed firefox, which solved the problem just fine. Unfortunately, once I did all my extensions stopped working. The page looks like this.

For most of my extensions, I can just solve this by getting rid of them and adding them again, but if I do that for onetab I'd lose all my stored tabs. How can I get this back?

I'm viewing a pdf that seems to be made of stacked images. While viewing this pdf in firefox it has these black lines between images, as seen in attachment, these change slightly as I zoom in. These lines do not appear when viewing the pdf in brave, see other attachment.

Also, this happens both on my desktop and laptop that have very different firefox setups.

How can I fix this without fixing the pdf?

How could I even fix the pdf?

Adding this post for SEO indexing purposes, as I cannot reply to the original archived one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1321170

The original post is one of the top search engine results, and provides a bandaid solution, without addressing the proper root cause, so I want to help whoever stumbles over this.

Original problem:

Dale 1/9/21, 8:26 AM

Firefox Developer Edition 85.0b4, macOS 10.15

If I Google for a PDF and click a link, I get the Firefox download dialog. If I select "Open with Firefox [Developer Edition]", the following things happen:

   The PDF is downloaded to ~/Downloads
   The PDF is opened in a new tab, with that new tab's location bar holding a file:///... URL to the downloaded PDF 

What I would instead like to happen is:

   The PDF is downloaded to some temporary directory where I won't have to worry about deleting it manually
   In whatever tab the PDF is displayed in, the location bar contains the URL where the PDF was (temporarily!) downloaded from 

How can I achieve this?

Not having the URL where a PDF was opened from is very annoying when, for example, I open a bunch of PDF search results to read and review, and I later want to share links to some of those PDFs. Best I can do to find their URLs to give to others is then to try and remember which tab corresponds to which search result, or do mine the downloads tab.

Contrast this with Chrome: I click a Google result for a PDF and the PDF just opens in the current tab with the URL to the PDF in the location bar. No dialogs, no PDF files hanging around in my home directory, and I can just copy the URL to the PDF the same way I'd copy the URL to any web page.

Thank you!

Proposed solution by original poster:

Dale Question owner 1/9/21, 9:27 AM Chosen Solution

Sigh. It appears the problem was one or both of the following preferences:

   pdfjs.enabledCache.state: false
   pdfjs.migrationVersion: 2 

I deleted both, and now clicking on a PDF just opens in the sane, normal way in Firefox that I desire.

Naturally I have no idea how those got set.

For the past YEAR or more, every time I choose to download a PDF (whether by saving a web page via file/print/save to PDF or by downloading an actual PDF via emailed link) my saved PDF has a padlock. I am forced to remove each padlock individually by adding 'users' under permissions. There is no way to do this for more than one file at a time.

This never used to happen in the past and I've made no changes to my PC or to my Firefox settings. I know it's a FF thing because if I save my own MS Word files to PDF there is no padlock.

Is there ANYTHING I can do to finally stop this and download PDFs without a padlock?

Thanks.

There is an issue with PDFs downloaded using the Firefox PDF viewer. The PDF contains a valid digital signature. When I set the parameter pdfjs.disabled = true, everything works as expected, the PDF is downloaded correctly, and when I open it with Adobe Reader, the signature is valid. However, when I set this parameter to false (default value) and download the PDF using the built-in Firefox PDF viewer, the signature becomes invalid. I compared both PDF files using a text editor and a diff tool, and the only difference I found was a specific change in the content. 1)pdf- signature is valid Ψα Exif II* μ Ducky d α http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/ <x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.6-c138 79.159824, 2016/09/14-01:09:01 "> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="" xmlns:xmpMM="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/" xmlns:stRef="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#" xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/" xmpMM:DocumentID="xmp.did:FF61BC20787811E896E6E83BD502C18A" xmpMM:InstanceID="xmp.iid:FF61BC1F787811E896E6E83BD502C18A" xmp:CreatorTool="paint.net 4.0.16"> <xmpMM:DerivedFrom stRef:instanceID="452A56456B1E68A148301EBAD51349D5" stRef:documentID="452A56456B1E68A148301EBAD51349D5"/> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> </x:xmpmeta> ξ Adobe dΐ Ϋ „ ΐ F F Δ • 2)invalid pdf Ψα Exif μ Ducky d α http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/ <x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.6-c138 79.159824, 2016/09/14-01:09:01 "> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="" xmlns:xmpMM="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/" xmlns:stRef="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#" xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/" xmpMM:DocumentID="xmp.did:FF61BC20787811E896E6E83BD502C18A" xmpMM:InstanceID="xmp.iid:FF61BC1F787811E896E6E83BD502C18A" xmp:CreatorTool="paint.net 4.0.16"> <xmpMM:DerivedFrom stRef:instanceID="452A56456B1E68A148301EBAD51349D5" stRef:documentID="452A56456B1E68A148301EBAD51349D5"/> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> </x:xmpmeta> ξ Adobe dΐ Ϋ „ ΐ F F Δ • I cannot understand why the Firefox PDF viewer modifies the PDF content. This is happening only to version 136.0.2. I had no issue before this version. Could you please help me?

I create and save files in OneDrive. When I open a file, it always opens in the Microsoft Edge Browser which is a problem for the old guy, me. I prefer that they open only in the documents folder as their specific kind of document; Word, PDF, and Excel spreadsheet files so that I can then move my files into various folders and sub-files. Hopefully, someone can figure out what I have said and help me. • I'm uncertain if the topic I chose accurately describes my question.

Firefox 138.0.1, MacOS Monterey 12.3

PDF files: settings is set to "Always ask" (see attached) However, when I click on a PDF link, and get the dialog "Open With" is grayed out, and the only option available is "Save File" (see attached screenshot). (A few weeks or months ago it all worked correctly.)

Is there a way to get "Open" working again?

Hi, I have few laminating machines icons on my computer face but I can't open them there is a message saying I can't open this file,

I think I have a Firefox PDF reader on my computer.

Thank you Bob Robertson

Recently, whenever I open saved (or sometimes new web) documents in Firefox, a very large pop-up on the lower right side of my screen appears with a cartoon of a pencil scanning a document. Below the cartoon it states "Now you can highlight your PDFs! With our new highlighter tool, you can read and edit PDFs in one place." The pop-up blocks half the view of the document and cannot be minimized or closed. It also prevents accessing (it hides) the "print" option if I want to print/save the page. I have WINDOWS 11 and have looked online for solutions to this problem which always produces the same suggestion: "go to 'settings', click 'privacy & security', check 'block pop-ups', click 'OK'", all of which I've done. I now limit my use of Firefox to streaming videos via amazon, and use Chrome or Edge for anything else I need to do, but I assume Firefox would not be happy to know of the aggravation their browser is causing, forcing users to go elsewhere (or am I the only person having this problem). Thank you in advance for any new suggestions.

I get bills in PDF form from my water and gas provider. When I pay the bills I use Adobe to add a "PAID" sticker and a comment indicating when the bill was paid, and then I save the PDF (from Adobe) with the newly added comment. Previously I was able to open these PDFs in Firefox and the contents of the comment (added via Adobe) was visible; however, recently when I used Adobe to add a comment to a PDF and then opened it in Firefox the contents of the comment were not displayed (NOTE: I opened the PDF in Edge and it displays the contents of the comment, but it doesn't display with the same wrapping as used when the comment was created in Adobe). Interestingly, older PDFs that I added comments to still open correctly in Firefox i.e. they display the contents of the comment. I am assuming there has been some sort of update to Adobe, and was wondering if there needs to be an update to Firefox to continue to allow the contents of comments in the PDF to be displayed.

When viewing pdf files created from MS Word (.docx) documents and sent to me I see white lines across some images but not all. This happens with Firefox on Windows 11 and linux mint (various versions). It is present on the images from the file as received and after uploading to a website. The images are OK if viewed using Opera or other browsers but the same problem is present on Thunderbird. The file below has the problem on 2 images when viewed on Firefox. https://www.kass.org.uk/Documents/NewsletterFrom251114/20260304%20March%20Newsletter.pdf I have caused the writer of the article a lot of trouble because I blamed her file which seems to be OK. Can you help? Thanks Brian

I am no longer able to open in Mac Preview or save when hitting Command + P, then 'print using system dialog'. It will only print instead. For instance, I save certain web pages as PDFs using the print dialog and now it will only print when trying to use either the save or preview options. Command + P, print using system dialog, then I choose either save as PDF or open in Mac Preview, but as soon as I do one of these it will only print. I am able to use save in the drop-down list of printers, but I need to be able to open in Mac Preview.

Recently, I am unable to open PDF's on Firefox. When I go to another browser and access the same site (such as a bank) I am able to view the PDF. I have tried some of the suggestions regarding extensions etc, but nothing seems to work. Is there a solution? Thanks, SVS