If you’ve ever clicked a PDF in NetDocuments and watched it land in a Chrome tab instead of Acrobat, you’re not alone. When a NetDocuments PDF opens in browser tabs rather than your PDF application, the cause is almost always a browser setting — and it’s the same three-click fix on every machine in the firm.
(This post replaces an older version that covered Internet Explorer. Microsoft retired IE in 2022, so those instructions are gone.)
Why This Matters More Than It Looks
Opening a PDF in a browser tab looks harmless. Read-only, no big deal.
The problem is what happens when someone marks it up. Chrome and Edge both ship annotation tools now, so an attorney can highlight a lease, sign a stipulation, or fill in a form right there in the tab. When they hit save, the browser writes a copy to the Downloads folder. Nothing goes back to NetDocuments.
The marked-up version is now sitting on one person’s laptop. The version in the Cabinet is the clean original. Nobody knows the two exist until somebody sends the wrong one to opposing counsel.
There’s a second, quieter version of the same problem: PDFs opened this way don’t check back in through ndOffice. You lose the version history, the audit trail, and the check-out lock that stops two people from editing the same file at once.
Why a NetDocuments PDF Opens in Browser Tabs, Not Acrobat
This isn’t a NetDocuments setting. NetDocuments hands the file to your computer and steps out of the way. Your browser is the one deciding to keep it.
Every modern browser — Chrome, Edge, and Firefox — now includes a built-in PDF viewer, and every one of them is set to use it out of the box. Nobody turned this on. It shipped that way, and it survives browser updates and new machines, which is why it keeps coming back.
The fix is to tell the browser to hand PDFs off instead of displaying them. Do it once per browser, per computer. It takes about a minute.
Part 1: Google Chrome
Step 1: Open Chrome’s PDF Settings
Paste chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments into the address bar and press Enter. If you’d rather click through the menus, it’s Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → Additional content settings → PDF documents.
Step 2: Select Download PDFs
You’ll see two options. Chrome defaults to Open PDFs in Chrome. Switch it to Download PDFs.
Step 3: Close the Settings Tab
There’s no Save button. The change takes effect immediately.
Part 2: Microsoft Edge
Step 1: Open Edge’s PDF Settings
Paste edge://settings/content/pdfDocuments into the address bar and press Enter, or go to Settings → Cookies and site permissions → PDF documents.
Step 2: Turn On Always Download PDF Files
Flip the Always download PDF files toggle to on.
Part 3: Mozilla Firefox
Step 1: Open Firefox’s Applications Settings
Paste about:preferences into the address bar, stay on the General page, and scroll down to Applications.
Step 2: Find Portable Document Format (PDF)
It’s in the alphabetical list of content types. The Action column will say Open in Firefox.
Step 3: Change the Action to Your PDF Application
Click the dropdown in the Action column and pick Use Adobe Acrobat, or whichever PDF editor your firm standardized on. Use other… lets you browse to it if it isn’t listed.
Still Opening in the Wrong Place?
Telling the browser to stop displaying PDFs only solves half of it. The file still has to land in the right application, and that comes from your Windows default — Settings → Apps → Default apps → Adobe Acrobat → Set default.
If PDFs are still opening somewhere unexpected after you’ve done all of the above, the default is pointing at Edge or Chrome at the Windows level. I walk through that one, along with Protected Mode errors and the ndOffice Adobe plug-in, in the Ultimate Guide to Troubleshooting Adobe Issues with NetDocuments.
The Result
PDFs open in Acrobat where your markup tools live, ndOffice tracks the check-out, and your edits go back into NetDocuments as a new version instead of dying in someone’s Downloads folder.
One minute per browser. Worth doing on every machine in the firm.
Need Help?
If PDFs are still opening in the wrong place across your firm — or you want this set once and enforced so users never have to touch it — we can sort out the whole Adobe and ndOffice configuration, usually in a single call.
Schedule a free consultation at go.oncehub.com/optconsult.
I’ve implemented NetDocuments at over 550 law firms since 2010, almost all of them in the 10–150 user range.