Annoying prompt opening PDFs in SharePoint 2010

Today I came across an issue where I created a doc library and uploaded some PDFs to it – When you click on a PDF it popped up a prompt saying open read only or edit.

When would I want to edit a pdf? (not very often in my case) – So I wanted to get rid of this.

Jess Collicot gave the answer (http://www.deliveron.com/blog/post/Fixing-Prompts-When-Opening-PDFs-in-SharePoint-2010.aspx)

Basically you have to edit an XML document in the 14 hive of your sharepoint server(s) – The document is called DOCICON.XML and can be found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML (or your equivalent 14 hive location)

Find the node starting <Mapping Key=”pdf” Value….

and add OpenControl=”” to the end (inside the triangular brackets) – Mine now looks like this…

<Mapping Key=”pdf” Value=”pdficon.gif” OpenControl=”” />

Then a quick IIS reset and the prompt is gone – PDFs now open straight in the browser nice and quick. 🙂