Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Can't open PDF file

Colorsync Utility shouldn't have anything to do with PDFs. Can you open it with Preview? If this becomes an ongoing problem, try rebuilding the Launch Services database with OnyX. Use the Maintenance tab and select Rebuild (at least in OnyX 2.3.7).

Are you sure it is a PDF?

What is the "dot extension" that came with it? Something like "name.pdf"?

Can you force it to open as a PDF by putting in the ".pdf" if you don't see it after the name?

Can you post a link to that PDF so that we can confirm this behavior? It might be a peculiarity of your system, or it might be something wonky with the file.

Thanks, Rita. I pasted the full address into Safari and Safari downloaded it as a PDF. I then saved it as a PDF, accessed the file from the desktop, and it opened in Preview (as it should).

Perhaps the email was compromised (just a thought)? As an interesting experiment, email a PDF to yourself and see what happens. In case you don't have any at hand, pick one from http://www.irs.gov/

Did the PDF open in Safari? If you accessed it from Safari, that's normal (Safari displays it, not Preview). I get that "portlet" thing also; my guess is that it's the IRS's designation. I don't seem to get it from other sites that I tried.

Safari can handle PDF's without your having to launch Preview. Preview is only used if the PDF is unopened, from another source. My best guess is that the email had some peculiarities. If this is the only time that it happens, you can probably ignore it. Still, you might want to rebuild the Launch Services database as a precaution. The only downside is that files will open with their default apps. If you had specified a different app for a particular file or file type, you'll have to reset it so that it opens with your preferred app. (For example, if you had set PDFs to open with Adobe Reader, that will change to Preview and you'll have to redo your preferences.)

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but it sounds like all that has happened is that the system has become confused about what program to open when you double-click on a PDF.

Your computer keeps a list of what programs go with what kinds of files. It's called the Launch Services database. Sometimes, it gets a bit cattywumpus and then the wrong program opens when you double-click a file.

I almost never double-click files to open them any more; instead, when I want to open a file, I click, hold down the mouse button, and drag it to the program I want to use. But if you double-click, every so often you might see weird things happen, like JPEGs trying to open in Microsoft Word or PDFs trying to open in ColorSync or something.

It is easy to fix. Do this:

Step 1: Click once on a PDF.
Step 2: Go to the File menu and choose Get Info.
Step 3: Look for a popup menu in the Info window that says Open With:. If it is not set to the program that you want to use (like, say, Preview), click the popup menu and choose Preview.
Step 4: Click the Change All button.

Now the Launch Services glitch has been fixed and the system will open Preview whenever you double-click a PDF.

yep sounds like the system thinks .PDF is meant to be opened as a colorsync profile. OR the pdf has a colorsync profile in it and it's incompatible. Does this happen with ALL pdfs now or just one or a few?

There is a big difference in email attachments and downloading files using either HTTP or FTP protocols. Because of limitations in the SMTP server protocols, email attachments must be converted into 7 bit ASCII characters using MIME protocols. Usually this is a very straightforward encoding/decoding process transparent to the user, but that is not always the case. The MIME encoding/decoding is NOT required, or used, for HTTP or FTP file transfers so the testing performed by Jchuzi and others, while informative, overlooks the possibility of a MIME glitch in the file you received by email.

I have seen a few, very few, cases where a MIME glitch caused an email attachment to have everything from a confused file type to an attachment that could not be decoded. Often resending the attachment solved the problem, but in at least one case, having the message resent did NOT cure the problem. Not having the time or sufficient curiosity to perform elaborate testing, the only explanation I could come up with was something wonky in the file itself or in the MIME encoder created the glitch.

It sounds to me as if this is one of those otherwise inexplicable situations.