Open Binary Object - PDF - with Reader not DC

Question

I am running an MS Access 2016 UI on top of a SQL Server 2019 db. We store 100s of documents associated with all kinds of records so I have a FILESTREAM table (tbl_detail_Attachments) which uses foreign keys to the records. In the interface, users can right-click "Insert Object" in the "Attachment" field of tbl_detail_Attachments. All good. Except I have 2 users who alone have Adobe Acrobat DC installed, and if they attach a PDF of any kind, any user who tries to open the Adobe object who does NOT have Acrobat (only Reader or any other PDF reader incl. Foxit) does not even see the option to Open Object (only convert, and that does nothing.) Unfortunately those 2 users enter the bulk of the documents and cannot uninstall Acrobat without serious limits to their job performance. And $powers$that$be will not buy Acrobat licenses for all users.

Things tried:

1. Acrobat users saving PDFs in archive, compressed, print etc formats. Nope.
2. Acrobat users inserting object as link. Nope.
3. 3. Acrobat users changing their default PDF to Reader. Nope.
4. Crazy developer opening the FILESTREAM metadata to see if the Object type can be manipulated to read "Reader." Maybe, but dont know how to do it programmatically for the 100s of records.
5. Crazy developer trying to change the nvarchar(MAX) <binary data> property on the Filestream table. Nope.

Things I'd like to try but don't know how

1. add code to the form so that users used a button to open binary object rather than right click. Code would force the file to open with the path
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe, fine, but then how does it know to open the binary object associated with the active record in tbl_detail_attachments? I'm not sure I understand FILESTREAM well enough to know how it knows ANYWAY.
2. add/find/steal a control that would allow Acrobat user to choose HOW to save the binary object at time of insertion
3. Leverage FileTables in some way? Does it add anything that Filestream does not?

any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

If you use a FileTable, the application can access the files directly through the file system, so I guess that could help.

I don't know exactly what is going on in your case. You say "does not even see the option to Open Object " - so where would they see this? To me this sounds like an issue with the application/Access - and I am not familiar with any of them. (I'm an SQL Server guy.)