Mikeserv Support Forum

I noticed Grogan mentioned Adobe reader not being ideal for Ma and Pa.
this might be helpful for somebody. I've been using PDFGear for quite a long time for editing pdfs, converting other file types to and from pdfs. It's free, no ads that I've ever seen, and simple to use. windows/mac/android only
I've used it on those Canada gov fillable pdfs that often gag unless you are using Adobe reader, no problems.

PS C:\Users\mhhor> winget install pdfgear
Multiple packages found matching input criteria. Please refine the input.
Name Id Source
-------------------------------
PDFGear 9N8CNV1VCPT6 msstore
PDFgear PDFgear.PDFgear winget
PS C:\Users\mhhor>

I dont' know how clean the website is for downloading. I use winget if I can.

https://www.pdfgear.com/

I never know how clean a website is when I give a link either, as I would never see it (Ublock Origin etc.)

I'll give that software a look, thanks.

I put PDFGear on my mother's computer today. So far it does what a PDF viewer should and has the controls etc. No cause to use any other function of it yet. It's certainly orders of magnitude better than that poxy adobe reader, which seems to only exist to direct people to their printing services and stuff nowadays.

Windows 10 gave it a hard time about the file association though. I removed Adobe first, and installed PDFGear. It prompted to take the file association and it acted as though it was successful, but Windows was reverting it to "Microsoft Edge PDF Document" after a reboot. That it worked until reboot tells me it certainly wrote something. Windows made that pretty hard, I had to do it manually by scrolling for the .pdf extension in the list and then finding PDFGear. Windows doesn't list it as an "app" anywhere, so it doesn't show up for the other file association methods (e.g. letting a program take control of its file types and protocols). They try to direct you away from that interface too, it takes a few clicks to find it (even after you've clicked to do it by file type, it still brings you back to another app list screen first where you have to click a similar link again to get to the actual file type interface. They are good at that lately)

P.S. I have noticed that behaviour has improved somewhat in Windows 11, it's not as difficult to get a program to take associations, or be the "default" something. Moreover I think it can be done programmatically again, though many applications will still pop up the interface (as it still really needs to be in Windows 10, as evidenced by that tomfoolery with PDFGear which tried to do it programmatically)

Yes, I had all that bullshit too getting it to stay as the default for .pdf files. I uninstalled Adobe as well. Since then it seems to be the default now with windows 11. I use Brave on windows and all works well, but I think when I put it on someone else's computer they told me that Google Chrome took over openings pdfs even after I had set pdfgear as the default. Anyway hopefully Mom will find it more enjoyable to work on a pdf without having to watch the usual Adobe song and dance.