Totara Learn Open Discussions

Controlling how pdf's open

Welcome to this forum!

We are in the process of moving from an old Totara site (2.9.51) to v13.

During testing one feature really bugged me. We still have some pdf content. In the previous version they open straight away within the browser (Chrome). Appearance was set to "Automatic".

When we migrated the courses to the new test site it forces download every time whether I have the appearance set to "open", new window , embed, pop-up etc. This makes the user experience really bad and shared computers are going to end up with multiple copies of learning documents downloads in random folders.

Anyone got any advice for me on creating a good user experience with pdf content.

Our Totara partner say it's to do with browser settings but I have hte two sites open in the same browser.

Thanks in advance

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Hi Tom

PDFs opening via download is default behaviour in Totara 13, no matter what a file resource's setting is. This is because PDF display is a known security risk in some browsers.

For a file activity, to reenable the ability to embed a PDF or have it open in the browser, go to Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > File and tick the 'Allow PDF embedding' checkbox.