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DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,229
3,792
South Dakota, USA
For the last couple of hours I have been trying to find the place to change my default setting for reading PDF's to Preview from Acrobat, because it seems to work better on my iMac. Everytime I save a PDF file it always saves as an Acrobat file and I have to control click the file to open with Preview. I know somewhere there is a preference panel to change this...but for the life of me I cannot find it...thanks ahead for any help.
 

mikeyredk

macrumors 65816
Mar 13, 2003
1,267
1
here is the permenent way
1) go to your apps folder
2) select the adobe reader
3) drag it to the trash
4) empty trash

there run the file you want to
 

homeshire

macrumors regular
Jul 24, 2002
214
0
Ohio, looking toward Germany
i wanna know this too. i had it set (by default) to preview, then i (made the mistake of downloading) acrobat 6. now pdf files open with reader. i wanna go back to the default, but don't know how. the first suggestion strikes me as a bit more drastic than i wanna go as a first move. :)
 

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2003
2,240
0
Los Angeles
Hit command-i after highlighting the file's icon. You'll have an option for "open with" (or something similar) and a further option to always use a particular app for those kinds of files. I had to do that after installing some Adobe product that changed all PDFs to Adobe. Preview is quicker and cleaner.
 

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
How to set Preview as the default for opening PDFs

I have only tested this in Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar).

Here are the steps:
1. Select any PDF file.
2. Open its 'Get Info' window (command-I).
3. Choose the 'Open with' tab/disclosure triangle (depends on which version of 10.2 you are running).
4. Pull down the menu that says (in your case) "Acrobat Reader (default)"
5. Choose "Preview" from the menu.
6. Click the "Change All..." button.
7. When prompted, choose "Continue".
8. If the pull-down now says "Preview (default)", it worked!
 

Le Big Mac

macrumors 68030
Jan 7, 2003
2,812
381
Washington, DC
Originally posted by Horrortaxi
Hit command-i after highlighting the file's icon. You'll have an option for "open with" (or something similar) and a further option to always use a particular app for those kinds of files. I had to do that after installing some Adobe product that changed all PDFs to Adobe. Preview is quicker and cleaner.

Thanks. Now what would be even nicer is if you could specify by the app. I hate adobe for use while surfing, but with work I get docs in adobe that i'd prefer to open that way.
 

benixau

macrumors 65816
Oct 9, 2002
1,307
0
Sydney, Australia
only problem is your changing extension relationship - type creator still overides this and unless you do it for that file it will open in the creator program or, failing that, then your default creator for that type.

ahhh - i miss type creator so very very much
 
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