Mac OS X and PDF files

DAB

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
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Louisiana
I have a question that one of you Mac guru's maybe able to help me with. I get a ton of PDF's via email from employee time sheets to work related reports and forms. Most of these I just need to print and not save. I have yet to figure out how to get the associated application (Preview) to just open it without saving it to my download directory.

I even installed Adobe Acrobat thinking the problem was Preview, but it still does this. I am using Apple Mail and even tried Thunderbird. I click on OPEN, not save and yet they are always saved anyway. This crap is driving me nuts. It seems at the end of the day I have a bunch of PDF's saved that I have to go in and delete. I never had this issue in Windows, as the only time it actually saved the files is if I told it to save.

Any ideas, thoughts or suggestion?
 
jef

jef

Power Pig, Hello!
Oct 12, 2008
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DAB said:
I have a question that one of you Mac guru's maybe able to help me with. I get a ton of PDF's via email from employee time sheets to work related reports and forms. Most of these I just need to print and not save. I have yet to figure out how to get the associated application (Preview) to just open it without saving it to my download directory.

I even installed Adobe Acrobat thinking the problem was Preview, but it still does this. I am using Apple Mail and even tried Thunderbird. I click on OPEN, not save and yet they are always saved anyway. This crap is driving me nuts. It seems at the end of the day I have a bunch of PDF's saved that I have to go in and delete. I never had this issue in Windows, as the only time it actually saved the files is if I told it to save.

Any ideas, thoughts or suggestion?
Click to expand...

Some apps are kinda annoying about that - Firefox can do silly things, as can Safari.

In Mail.app, though, it should actually show you the PDF in the message window. Right-click on it and choose "Open With ->" and choose Preview.app. Shouldn't save it anywhere unless you then tell it to. Not sure if there is a setting for the display toggle - but try it with your current setup and see what happens. If need be, I'll poke through the prefs when I get back home in a while and see if I set anything specific for this behavior.
 
MM

MM

Administrator
Oct 9, 2008
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If I click on a link for a .pdf in an email it asks me what I want to do. I can save it or open it.

Click open, then print. (I think) :)
 
DAB

DAB

Mod Emeritus
Oct 9, 2008
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149
63
Louisiana
jef said:
Some apps are kinda annoying about that - Firefox can do silly things, as can Safari.

In Mail.app, though, it should actually show you the PDF in the message window. Right-click on it and choose "Open With ->" and choose Preview.app. Shouldn't save it anywhere unless you then tell it to. Not sure if there is a setting for the display toggle - but try it with your current setup and see what happens. If need be, I'll poke through the prefs when I get back home in a while and see if I set anything specific for this behavior.
Click to expand...

Yes I think this is related to Thunderbird and FireFox. I did go back into Apple Mail and sure enough right there is saves Open With and then it allowed me to open it without saving. In Thunderbird even though I would click on Open it would still save a copy. I just tested this out and that appears to work just fine. Just one more reason for me to now ditch Thunderbird. Gosh after 4 years of using it, I guess it just shows us that sometimes things change.


MM said:
If I click on a link for a .pdf in an email it asks me what I want to do. I can save it or open it.

Click open, then print. (I think) :)
Click to expand...

Yeah that would be the logical thought, unfortunately not from Thunderbird and heck not from FireFox either, if I do that with either program it saves them as well as opens them. So for whatever reason just opening doesn't just open! LOL

I got it figured out now though! I guess I'll have to use Apple Mail.
 
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