Roadmap for PDF reader in Microsoft Edge

[Aditi_Gangwar]

Over the course of last year, we worked hard on building a powerful PDF reader that offers compatibility, reliability, and security for you and your organization.

The feedback we received from you from the Edge Insider builds has been really encouraging, and here are some of the most asked features that are available today, across Windows, Mac, and Linux:

Reading and Navigation:

• Table of Contents enables you to view the contents of PDF files and navigate to different parts seamlessly, improving your productivity.
• Page view enables you to view the PDF file in a book format, with the option to view the cover page separately.
• Caret mode lets you navigate through your PDF files and select text directly through your keyboard by enabling Caret mode by pressing F7.
• Accessibility support including keyboard accessibility, screen reader support, and capability to view PDFs in high contrast mode.
• Fill basic PDF forms directly in the browser. (Please note that XFA forms are currently not supported)

Annotation tools:

• Ink on PDF files with colors and stroke width of your choice.
• Text notes can be added quickly to text in the file to jot down thoughts for easy reference later.
• Create highlights with Highlight mode enables you to draw attention to parts of the PDF that you find interesting. With Highlight mode, you can now create highlights directly by selecting text, as you would do with a highlighter and paper.
• In-context annotations opens a quick menu right when you select text on PDF files, enabling you to take quick actions as highlight, copy without losing context.

Enterprise and Education:

• Read Aloud is now supported on PDF documents. You can use it either to retain focus while reading through it or to listen to PDF documents while multitasking!
• Dictionary and search through in-context menu keeps helps you understand the content and research better, while keeping you in context.
• Open Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) and Information Rights Management (IRM) protected PDFs and view permissions seamlessly within Microsoft Edge, without the need of any add-ins. MIP adds a layer of security to your documents. It ensures that only the users who have certain permissions such as view, copy, annotate can take those actions on the file. Hence, no matter where the document goes, the data of your organization remains secure.
• Viewing MIP files protected in other tenants: This will enable you to view the files protected in other organizations, or in other tenants in the organization.
• Certificate based Digital Signatures, which is currently under preview allows you to view and validate digital signatures present on PDF documents directly in the browser.

Here are the features we’re currently working on:

• View recovery: On re-opening a PDF file, reach your last-read location easily.
• File preview of PDF files in File Explorer and Outlook
• Add text box annotations: Add text boxes to fill forms, or take notes on PDFs
• Validate Certificate based Digital Signatures: We’re currently working on adding support for signatures with long-term validity.

Further down the line:

• Viewing labels of protected files
• Digital Signatures:
• Validating ETSI signatures
• Add Digital Signatures
• Accessibility improvements: Advanced capability to fill forms and navigate through a PDF document using screen readers.

We are actively looking at feedback from you about the features you find important.

Please feel free to comment below or submit detailed feedback through the browser by going to " ... menu > Help and feedback > Send feedback”.

[#2]

Please can I beg you add a measure to scale tool?
This was there on the old IE/Adobe Plugin and is a crucial tool for our users of our Document Management System.
Whilst the suppliers have added a viewer from LEADTOOLS, it is only available to users who have edit rights - the other users simply open PDFs in the browser.
In IE, not a problem as IE simply passed it on to the Adobe Plugin, for Edge however (and this include webview2) we really need this tool to be there.
Many thanks

[#3]

I see a Setting in Edge (Cookies and site permissions - PDF documents - PDF view settings) to open a PDF to the last viewed location when you reopen a file. I think the URL page directive "?page=x" should OVERRIDE that setting. If a link to a PDF wants you to start at page 1, that's where you should start.

[#4]

The Annotate feature in Preview on the Mac allows me to add a scanned/drawn signature to a PDF. Since I suck at signing my name on a touchpad or touchscreen, this is enormously useful.

[#5]

@Aditi_Gangwar

Primeiramente, peço desculpas por não saber escrever em inglês, sou brasileiro.

Costumo fazer marcações(realce) nos textos em PDF nos meus estudos.

Gostaria de saber se existe a opção de encontrar essas partes marcadas de maneira mais fácil?

Ou eu mesmo tenho que ir passando pagina por pagina ate encontrar onde marquei? (costumo fazer assim por que não achei nenhum outro jeito)

Um amigo usa o Adobe, e nele tem uma opção como se fosse uma aba, onde mostra todas as marcações feitas. Então ao clicar em uma delas, você ja vai direto pra pagina onde a marcação está.

Caso não tenha essa opção no EDGE sugiro que pensem em adiciona-la. Pois é de grande ajuda para estudantes.

[#6]

@Aditi_Gangwar 

First, Edge is an amazing web browser. If PDF viewer and editor could be integrated into Edge, it could be the best tool across browsers for any files (hope so).

Free typing and Text box !!!!! If possible, please add on "picture insertion" and "other file format export" (such as PNG, TIFF).

Thank you for your excellent work!!! 

[#7]

@Aditi_Gangwar any roadmap for printing to keep last print setting. It quite inefficient to keep changing the layout(label sticker always detected as landscape even though the printer setting is potrait) and scale always revert to Fit (110%) where it need to be in actual size or 100%.

Thanks.

[#8]

@Aditi_Gangwar Please add a button to "Open in Desktop App" like you do for Office documents!  We need the ability to work on SharePoint PDFs directly in Acrobat DC and there's currently no option to do so, the only options are to use the browser viewer with limited functionality, even though it's growing, or to download a copy.  Acrobat DC supports SharePoint's check-out and check-in functionality and directly saving edits to SharePoint document libraries where the PDF is hosting. Thanks!

[#9]

HI MarinM, it is already implemented, if you are going to be inking, just click ink, there will be a tiny icon with a finger you can toggle to use your finger or your pen :)

[#10]

Wonderful idea :) Send feedback to the engineers through Alt - Shift -I and if you add your email, they will send a email when it is fixed :) have a good dya

[#11]

@Aditi_Gangwar 

Any plans to introduce redaction? i.e block text & hide.

[#12]

PDF with some layers turned off view correctly in Edge, but when printing the preview and physical print shows all layers. Either add proper layer control or print as Edge currently displays the PDF.

[#13]

Hello @posinha , are there any news for implementation of this feature?
Thanks a lot.

[#14]

a button "Open in Desktop App" would be great

[#15]

Support for viewing and validating signature would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[#16]

Strongly agree. In a professional design environment, it is essential that downloaded PDFs open only in Acrobat DC, never in Edge. Among other reasons, there are nuances of typography and color settings that will probably never be cost-effective to engineer into the Edge PDF reader, yet they are essential in commercial design work.

I have set Acrobat DC as the default app to open PDFs. When I click on the "Open" link for a PDF in the download list, that PDF should open in Acrobat.

[#17]

I'm really missing a simple '+' (zoom-in) and '-' (zoom-out) icon at the bottom of the pdf in the quick hoover-menu that appears. The selection of different zoom-percentages (although probably usefull for some) is a hassle to me for fast and quick viewing of a newly opened pdf.

[#18]

Could we have a setting how the PDF file is always opened? I would like to have it open the PDF standard in the two pages view and that the seperate front page option is turned on. Now with each PDF file I open I have to set those options again.

[#19]

Did you try Ctrl + mousewheel?

[#20]

@Aditi_Gangwar 

First of all I want to thank you for everything you did up to this point.

I would like to suggest a few things which I did already in the past, but nobody took notice.

As a musician, I use my folding laptop (Lenovo yoga 720) as music reader.

When the laptop is folded it automatically goes into tablet mode and then I try to view my music through the edge browser in fullscreen mode. A few problems rises:

1. you can't flip pages by just touching the srcreen, you have to do a swipe down motion, (when not in full screen there is just no way to touch the screen to "flip the page" you have to use the scrollbar. (BTW you could do it in the old Edge.

2. In fullscreen mode there is no Ink Bar - you can't write or edit\erase annotations, also it is very inconvenient to exit fullscreen mode, you have to unflip the laptop in order to access the keyboard to press escape.

Thank you so much.

[#21]

Please fix disappearance of added texts (via Add text option) with some unicode characters, words containing č or Č (unicode 010D or 010C respectively) still disappearing, there are a lot of claimed-by-edge-team-supported languages such as Slovenian, but it is still impossible to add text with simple čirk... =(