Now in public preview: Get Adobe PDF experience in Teams

[Kaushal Mehta (LYNC)]

Description

Now, you can make the Adobe Acrobat Teams app as the default PDF handler in Teams. Once done, all PDF files from the chat, channel, and files app will open directly in the Acrobat app within Teams. Your tenant users do not need any Adobe Acrobat subscription, or an Adobe ID to view the PDFs, view bookmarks, search a PDF, or comment and annotate PDFs. However, to Create, Organize, Combine, or Export a PDF, the tenant users will need an Adobe Acrobat subscription and an Adobe ID.

Flighting status

Available in public preview.

How to enable

To set Acrobat as default PDF handler, follow these steps:

1. Setup the Acrobat app to work in the tenant.

1. Log in to Teams admin center.
2. In the left panel, go to Teams app > Manage apps.
3. Search for the Acrobat app, then click the app to go to the app details page.
4. All apps are by default allowed; hence, no action is needed. If a preexisting admin setting, an app permission policy, or an org-wide app setting has blocked the app, make sure the app is allowed.
5. On the Permissions tab, select Review permission requested by the app, then click Accept to grant consent. To know more about app consent, click here.

2. Make the Acrobat app available on users’ Teams client

1. Log in to Teams admin center.
2. In the left panel, go to Teams app > Setup policies.
3. Select Global (Org-wide default) and then select Edit.
4. Under Installed apps, select Add apps.
5. Search Acrobat app, add it and save the policy. To know more about app install policies, click here.

While the app can be set up to work on both TAC and MAC, this policy can only be set up on TAC as of now. Hence, we recommend admins use TAC to deploy seamlessly.

Note 1: If you need information about enabling the public preview itself, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.

Supported clients and platforms

Windows 10	macOS	iOS	Android	Linux	Chrome	Firefox	Safari	Edge	Internet Explorer
Yes	Yes	-	-	-	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	-

How does this feature impact the existing experience?

All PDF files will directly open in Acrobat app instead of native Teams viewer.

Known issues

If a tenant has SharePoint file handler setup for PDF files, the PDF files on Channel files tab will open as per Sharepoint file handler end point instead of Acrobat app.

Known limitations

1. PDFs on assignment app will continue to open in Teams viewer
2. When user pins a PDF file on channel, the PDF will be opened in native Teams viewer.

Enable your Teams client for the public preview 

1. First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.  
2. Users then choose to join the public preview individually. See Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com) for instructions. 

Send us your feedback 

Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help > Give feedback.  This is on the bottom left of your client.

Thank you,

Preview Team, @Soumitra Paul 

Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams

[#2]

I've installed this in my Teams but pdf files continue to open in the default viewer and not in the app.

Any ideas why this might be?

[#3]

I've installed this through the method shown and it works on Teams Web but it does not work on Teams Desktop or Teams Mobile.

[#4]

What Connor said.

Can't get it to work for guest users either. Is this expected?

[#5]

Guest users aren't in Public Preview, and that's how this is working, at least for now.

[#6]

Above says not supported on mobile. Works just fine for me on Desktop. Make sure desktop client is switched to Public Preview

[#7]

What made a difference for us was to force-install the app. Having the app as "allowed" isn't enough

[#8]

PDF documents do open on Acrobat for us. However, I can only search and look at pages and bookmarks. For commenting and/or annotating is asking for an Adobe ID.

[#9]

@Alex_Kattar : Same experience here in my environment. Viewing PDFs works fine in Adobe App. It pops up as default. But for commenting etc. it asks for an Adobe ID. 

[#10]

@Kaushal: Any update regarding the functionality of Adobe ID? Thanks.

[#11]

@ArchieW, what I have noticed is that if you ever used an Adobe ID, it will ask for it. If you never have, it doesn't.

[#12]

@Kaushal Mehta (LYNC), Adobe's documentation, last updated on Sep 23, 2022, states "Use the Adobe Acrobat app's commenting features to write notes to yourself as you view or read documents. Sign in to your Adobe account to be able to use the annotation tools like Insert Sticky Note, Highlight Text, or Draw markups on the PDF." Can you please provide clarification?

Also, is there a difference in functionality whether the document is open in Chat vs a Channel?

Thank you

https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/microsoft-teams.html

[#13]

@Alex_Kattar: What exactly do you mean with "if you ever used an Adobe ID"? Do you mean "ever used an Adobe ID with a specific user" or "within a specific Tenant"? What I tried: I created a completly new user within the tenant. Logically this user never used an Adobe ID before... but I still can only open and view the PDF in Teams as standard App. If I want to annotate or comment, I would have to log in with an Adobe ID.

[#14]

@ArchieW, interesting. Since I last posted, I've noticed the behavior to be inconsistent across the board. It asks some users for Adobe ID and to others doesn't. Additionally, discovered that although annotations are visible to other members of the Team, they're not shown in real time, which makes it far from ideal for synchronous collaboration.  

[#15]

@Alex_Kattar : Really interesting behaviour. Did'nt get it running without asking for Adobe ID at all. Would be really good to know, if there is anything we are missing out, which needs to be configured or if it is simple behaving arbitrarily from our point of view. 

[#16]

thanks for making this available @Soumitra Paul, would like to know if there's any plan to include feature to allow annotation on iOS app as well please? we need that functionality as the current iOS app does not allow saving back the annotated pdf docs to teams.

[#17]

Can anybody give advice, in which case the Adobe ID registration still pops up or what needs to be done from admin perspective to get rid of the Adobe ID pop-up window? Is it still a technical challenge to implement this or am I doing something wrong? I cant get it running without Adobe ID. Thanks for your advice. 

[#18]

@Planet86based on my testing you can't open the app directly without been asked for Adobe ID. But when you open a PDF file within Teams it should open in Adobe instead of the integrated PDF reader without having to enter Adobe ID. With that said, you will still get prompted to enter Adobe ID for every possible function, like trying to post a comment or highlight text.

[#19]

@Ellefs1: Thanks for your input. My experience is the same. This being said, I just quote the initial post for this preview from Kaushal:
"Your tenant users do not need any Adobe Acrobat subscription, or an Adobe ID to view the PDFs, view bookmarks, search a PDF, or comment and annotate PDFs. However, to Create, Organize, Combine, or Export a PDF, the tenant users will need an Adobe Acrobat subscription and an Adobe ID" .
This ist not working like this so far.
Regards