Answered By: Library Systems Team
Last Updated: 31 May, 2017     Views: 104

Chrome users may find PDF content loads inside a frame without downloading. If you encounter an error, "failed to load PDF document", when you click on a “standard access” PDF link in Chrome, then you can fix the problem by disabling the built-in PDF plugin as follows:

  1. Type or paste chrome://settings/content into address bar
  2. A pop-up labeled "Content Settings..." will open
  3. Scroll down to the bottom to "PDF Documents"
  4. Select or deselect the check box labelled "Open PDF files in the default PDF viewer application"
  5. Select the [Finished button] (see screenshot below)

Chrome's setting for viewing PDF content - select or deselect as necessary and then hit the Finished button 
 

6. Then try to reload or refresh the content in the browser window or tab. To read ebook content, for example, you should deselect this setting (as shown below) to be able to read the ebook content inside the browser's frame (see screenshot below).

 

A MyiLibrary ebook displayed on the Chrome browser after deselecting the default PDF setting

 

If you are still having trouble displaying content on Chrome try switching to another browser, such as Firefox:

 

PDF viewer on a Firefox browser viewing content at EBSCOhost

 

Another workaround would be to select an interactive PDF document, if one is offered, for example at Taylor & Francis Online, so that the PDF loads with an option to download at the top...

 

interactive PDF document on Taylor & Francis Online

interactive PDF with download button at top on Taylor & Francis Online

 
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