This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Federal court website gives a .pl document which opens as garbage until we manually change it to .pdf, is there any way to get Firefox to do this automatically?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by FredMcD

more options

I am using a Mac. When downloading a document from the federal court website using Firefox, we get a .pl document which opens as garbage (in TextEdit) until we manually change it to .pdf, which causes it to open just fine (in Preview). It used to work fine, giving a .pdf document every time, but apparently upgrades to Firefox have removed this functionality. As far as I can tell my computer, an iMac running Mac system OS X 10.10.1, does not recognize the .pl format. Is there any way to get Firefox to automatically convert a downloaded file from .pl format to .pdf format? My friend tells me that Google Chrome downloads these documents with no problem. I would prefer to stick with Firefox but I might have to change if every downloaded document is in an unreadable format.

This is a typical example of what I get when I try to open a .pl document (the pdf version is a one page document using plain English):

=

%PDF-1.5 %‚„œ” 2 0 obj <</Length1 15628/Length 10121/Filter/FlateDecode>>stream xúÌ{i`?U∂9∑™∫;kWoYÈtuö?K??“Ñ?R@“ F!,Å$??ñê?ÑÑ?d?? ??Ç?䆆¢≤) ¢Ääƒet\?FeûN?࣌???∆?y3"ÈÔ‹Í??|Ûæ˜˝˙˛LUNü{œ›Œ=€=∑i

I am using a Mac. When downloading a document from the federal court website using Firefox, we get a .pl document which opens as garbage (in TextEdit) until we manually change it to .pdf, which causes it to open just fine (in Preview). It used to work fine, giving a .pdf document every time, but apparently upgrades to Firefox have removed this functionality. As far as I can tell my computer, an iMac running Mac system OS X 10.10.1, does not recognize the .pl format. Is there any way to get Firefox to automatically convert a downloaded file from .pl format to .pdf format? My friend tells me that Google Chrome downloads these documents with no problem. I would prefer to stick with Firefox but I might have to change if every downloaded document is in an unreadable format. This is a typical example of what I get when I try to open a .pl document (the pdf version is a one page document using plain English): ===== %PDF-1.5 %‚„œ” 2 0 obj <</Length1 15628/Length 10121/Filter/FlateDecode>>stream xúÌ{i`U∂9∑™∫;kWoYÈtuöK“ÑR@“ F!,Å$ñêÑÑd Ç䆆¢≤) ¢Ääƒet\FeûN࣌∆y3"ÈÔ‹Í|Ûæ˜˝˙˛LUNü{œ›Œ=€=∑i

All Replies (2)

more options

HI jlawrence1, Is it possible to associated the pl file mimetype with an application? Applications panel - Set how Firefox handles different types of files

more options

Instead of just downloading, right click and select Save Link As....

Contact the web site support and ask about this.