Forum Discussion
Edit PDF in sharepoint online
Dear community,
I am trying to edit pdfs stored in a document library on sharepoint with no success.
Is this possible at all to do?
Regards!
I just set up an entire workflow for staff and important committee members in which the committee members, who are external users, would mark up a fillable PDF with comments in comment boxes I created as fillable fields. I just got an email back from one of them saying his comments disappeared after he filled them in. The entire point of this was to make document review and commenting as easy as possible with as few clicks as possible. Requesting a committee of six people either use internet explorer (you overestimate how many people even know what the word 'browser' means) and follow additional steps, or download and reupload (bad, bad, bad practice in any situation) the PDF is not even under consideration. It's humiliating that I did a training for everyone, created documentation, and then come to find out that a feature that should be there isn't.
(While MS is at it, please make fillable PDFs appear in their fillable form upon clicking on the file name in SharePoint - as it is, you have to hover over the file, click the vertical dots > Open > Open in browser for the file to even appear in its fillable form - which as previously detailed is a bait and switch anyway, since if you fill it out, it won't save)
- I've an example by Laura Rogers using Word quick parts that map to SharePoint columns, you can lock the Word document so only the fields are editable. This does have the same editing problem as you have to open it in Word for quickparts to work but you could set the default library open to default to client application.https://wonderlaura.com/2019/01/09/microsoft-flow-quick-parts/
I just finished doing that but your suggestion to set the library to default open to client app I'll do now. Thanks Alan. But if any MS staff is reading, this fix doesn't suffice. Issue *not* resolved. Nothing short of near-total Adobe-MS integration will do in the business world...if MS can't imitate PDF features for IP reasons. You see my end users don't care what they click on. They just want to click on something once and have it work right. This is the smartphone mentality. People are no longer used to having to hunt around on screens for things.
Actually, the responses above are partially correct. You are able to edit the pdf in place with a few extra clicks. As long as you have an adobe version installed that has edit capabilities....try this
- Make sure you are in Internet Explorer - yes, I know its slow but it's the only way to get to "explorer" view
- View your library in explorer
- Classic Experience - Go to the library tab and select "Open with Explorer"
- Modern Exp - Click the view drop down and select the "View in File Explorer" view
- Double click on your pdf and adobe will launch
- Follow the prompts...it will ask you to check out the file (even if you don't have check in/out turned on)
- Make your edits
- Save and check in
Please let us know if this works
- On a Mac. How about instead of all this, just add the capability? PDF forms are supposed to work pretty much everywhere. Teams... always being the exception to a streamlined workflow.
Hi pnthrzrule
I have tried your suggestion but I have the changes weren't saved in SP. Do you have any idea why it happens? Any other way of editing PDF in SP ?
Tnx Yj
I'm late to this discussion and very new to SharePoint. I'm in the consideration phase of migrating our cloud file server to SharePoint. Staff are used to accessing docs, xlsx, pdf, etc via a drive mapping in Windows Explorer. So, SharePoint is going to be a culture shock and will need lots of training. On just the issue of files:
We modify PDFs regularly as our staff will store an invoice "to be approved" in a particular folder. They add a stamp with comment notes documenting the proper Accounting codes/accts and comments on the expense. Their manager reviews invoices in the folder and will add a rubber stamp marking it as approved. The manager then moves the PDF into a "to be paid" folder for our accountant to go though.
From my brief Googling and experimentation, OneDrive seems to be the solution to this PDF-edit topic. Staff can use the browser and would only be able to view PDFs, not edit. However, if I sync the Sharepoint site, the site shows up in my File Explorer. From there, I can double-click and open PDFs locally on the desktop with Adobe or we use Foxit PDF Pro. When I save, it saves and syncs. I can cut and paste the file in Explorer to move it between the folders.
Am I right about this? Am I missing something?
Unfortunately, we are no longer allowed to use IE. I have libraries synced so I can still open a pdf file n Windows Explorer and edit, but that kind of sucks. But, it's the only option at this time that I am aware of.
- Yes Paula - for reasons I can't quite fathom you are correct. Why Microsoft don't implement hooks in SharePoint to allow you to open/edit from the web is beyond me. It would make SharePoint so much easier to use.
- It may not always be possible for all your documents but if they aren't too custom, you can open PDFs in Word.
- Hi Carl,
PDFs should be opened in your browser with no problems...can you share more details about what issues are you having?- Hi Carl,
As an alternative, if you have Acrobat Adobe DC (and possibly other instances), it is possible to map a SharePoint library with Adobe itself.
I agree it's really disappointing that we cannot force .pdfs to open in the desktop application.
Like Juan says, hopefully, we will get some better integration soon.
For some of our users, this is enough to stop them from using SharePoint.
