All of a sudden the PDF loader is not working in Scrivener. I am on the most recent version of the software (3.1.5.1 (2073405) 64-bit - 06 Jul 2023) and have not previously had problems viewing PDFs in the software. Now I get this message:
Scrivener is unable to load this PDF file due to following error:
Couldn’t open the PDF file
You can try to open the PDF file in external editor.
Indeed I have tried opening the relevant PDFs in external editors, without problems. I have tried many different PDFs, as well, and none of them load. Any chance this feature has broken as a result of a recent Windows update? There are no other relevant changes to my system.
I’m not seeing this problem on my end. Is this only occurring with existing PDF imports, or if you import a new PDF, do you immediately encounter this issue as well? What version of Windows is your computer running?
Another possibility is that something broke in the installation, like the DLL that displays PDFs. A quick reinstall should sort out whether that is the case. Take care to back up your settings before uninstalling, with the “Manage” button in the lower left corner of the Options window. Everything else will be left untouched, like your templates and compile settings; it’s a relatively painless troubleshooting step.
Thanks to each of you for your reply. I have W11H 10.0.26100.
Today I tried some different permutations and the plot is thickening a little bit. The PDF viewer still works for pre-existing projects–and, it worked when I tried creating a new project stored to a local, non-cloud synced folder. (The project with problems displaying PDFs is in a OneDrive folder). I later re-saved that project to OneDrive, and now I’m able to view PDFs without a hitch.
So, I’m not quite sure what’s going on. One of the older projects that still displays PDFs properly is also saved to OneDrive; I don’t see a clear pattern here. For now I will ride my luck and not reinstall. I know this is a less than ideal bug report since at this point the issue is at least partially resolved for me too, even if the way that it was resolved is not clear…
Since it seems to be off-and-on with OneDrive, and in particular working with projects you have just uploaded to it, I would double-check your settings to make sure you are storing all of your data locally.
It could be less to do with the PDF viewer component, and more to do with the PDF not being on your computer at all—and if that’s the case, you’re probably missing other important content too.