Allow domain-based exclusion for "Always download PDF files" behaviour

[joshnystrom]

In our Enterprise, having the "Always download PDF files" setting as a simple toggle is overly restrictive. I would like the Edge product team to consider implementing a domain-based exclusions list for this behaviour. Doing so would greatly change our corporate experience with the browser (now our default) by enabling specific apps to display embedded PDFs while maintaining "Always download PDF files" as the standard setting. We enforce this setting generally because we use XFA PDF forms which cannot be opened via browser/extension. The attached screenshot highlights an undesirable user experience for embedded PDFs - the user cannot change the setting indicated in the messaging and it is not clear that "Download File" will auto-open the file per our settings. I have also submitted this feedback via the 'Send help and feedback' channel.

[#2]

@joshnystrom Hello!  Thanks for sending your feedback!  I can see we have it on our backlog to update the AlwaysOpenPdfExternally policy to allow an exception list but there is no ETA for when this will be available.  

Currently, there is limited support for XFA in Microsoft Edge via the PDFXFAEnabled policy (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies#pdfxfaenabled)  Maybe this is something you can test for your scenario.  

-Kelly

[#3]

Hi @Kelly_Y!

Thank you for clarifying that this feature is on the product backlog. Such an addition would be a great improvement for teams such as ours.

I enabled the limited XFA support on my system but found that in one of our commonly used XFA forms, the form field labels did not render. I will work with our Forms group to determine if it is a fonts issue or something else. I appreciate you making me aware of that feature, even if it does not yet improve our situation.

Thank you,

Josh

[#4]

@Kelly_Y 

I 2nd this request.  We have some websites that expect and require Edge to open the PDF natively. However, we would like it to open the system PDF viewer in all other cases.

What is the status of this request?

-Eli