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I clicked on a link to download a file and opened a blank tab

M JM
M JM
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So I clicked on a link to download a pdf file then I went into the download arrow and I clicked on the file. When I clicked on the file it just opened a new blank tab. After try and try again I still can't get it to download the file correctly. I have tired everything. I have the most current version of firefox and my fire wall is not interfering with firefox at all. I don't know if it's the website or something but I am lost.

So I clicked on a link to download a pdf file then I went into the download arrow and I clicked on the file. When I clicked on the file it just opened a new blank tab. After try and try again I still can't get it to download the file correctly. I have tired everything. I have the most current version of firefox and my fire wall is not interfering with firefox at all. I don't know if it's the website or something but I am lost.

All Replies (4)

jippik
jippik
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Hello Maddness

Do you have Adobe installed on your computer? I think what the browser is trying to do is open the file instead of downloading thats what it does most of the time. Try to open the file again and wait for a little bit, it might take some time to load. But if the download is necessary then please right click on the link and click "Save link as" button and choose the place to save and the download should start. Prior to that i would recommend checking download progress to make sure that it didnt download the pdf files before, without your knowledge on the background. Thats to avoid duplications. The download window you can view by pressing Ctrl+J

Please post here if you need further assistance.

Best Regards

JK

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Try to rename (or delete) the mimeTypes.rdf file in the Firefox profile folder to reset all file actions.

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

You can check the value of the plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types pref on the about:config page and remove the application/pdf part if present or reset the pref to the default via the right-click context menu if you want to display PDF documents in Firefox with another application (i.e. not the built-in PDF Viewer).

See also:

M JM
M JM Umnikazi wombuzo
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Ok well I have tried everything that was suggested. Nothing worked. I have adobe installed and I have tried the 'mimeTypes.rdf' file suggestion. I do not know what to do. If this helps it keeps saving the file as an 'HTML' file. I don't know if that has something to do with it or not. I don't have a lot of experience with fire fox so I am quite confused as to why this is happening. Thank you all anyways for trying to help. I appreciate it.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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On the download list, if you use the icon in the circle on the right side -- Open Containing Folder -- Firefox should launch a Windows Explorer window showing the file in the download location. Does Windows recognize the file as a PDF -- usually the "type" would be "Adobe Acrobat Document" -- or as some other kind of document, such as a "Firefox HTML Document"?

If it is not recognized as the right type of document, you could try renaming it. In order to do this successfully, you may need to turn off a default feature of Windows to hide certain file extensions (like .pdf). This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wi.../show-hide-file-name-extensions. Make sure the file name ends with .pdf and then see whether it will open in Adobe Reader/Adobe Acrobat.