Why viewing PDF file open in SharePoint 2019 OOS site instead of the browser viewer.

Question

Hi, We had SharePoint 2019 onprem and Office Online Server. When we open PDF file, it open PDF file in OOS site instead of browse viewer? Is is expected behavior or not? If not, how can we configure SharePoint in the backend to open PDF file in browser viewer.

Thanks.

T

Answer 1

Hi @Nguyen, Tee ,

It is expected behavior for PDF files to open in Office Online Server (OOS) when using SharePoint 2019 on-premises. This is because OOS is designed to handle the rendering of Office and PDF files within SharePoint.

If you would like to configure SharePoint to open PDF files in the browser viewer, you can try to add PDF (by default it is added) to the web application’s trusted MIME Type List. Please follow these steps:

1.Remove the binding by executing the following PowerShell command:

Get-SPWOPIBinding –Application "PDF" | Remove-SPWOPIBinding -Confirm:$false 

2.Add PDF to the web application’s trusted MIME Type List

open the SharePoint Management Shell as administrator, and then run PowerShell commands:

$webApplication = Get-SPWebApplication("http://sp/")  ## web application URL  
$webApplication.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes.Add("application/pdf")  
$webApplication.Update()   

You could check whether the PDF has been added successfully through the $webApplication.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes command.

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