OWA and PDF files...

[Anantram]

Need some urgent help regarding OWA. Problem is whenever I receive a PDF file as attachment in OWA and I try to open, it wont open the file. Instead it just opens a new blank window. This happens only with PDF and no other files like word or excel. At the same time when I open the same email in Outlook, the PDF file opens fine without any problem or error.

Any idea what is wrong with OWA and how can I fix it? Many thanks.

[MikeY007]

If I’m not wrong you are using SP1 with MS Exchange. If yes, then you are not missing anything because it is the normal behavior with OWA. The reason behind this behavior is operating system wont recognizes the attachment type and hence users are forced to save the attachment to their hard drive. Going in details of the cause, when you install SP1 a new registry entry is added for Microsoft Outlook Web Access.

Here the KnownContentTypes key specifies and restricts the kind of attachment types that IT can open in web browser when you use OWA. Hence you must first save the file to HDD and then open file from the disk.

In order to make the changes on your server itself, you can follow the steps provided below:

• Navigate to the following key:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA
• If you find remove "application/pdf" from the Level2MIMETypes value
• add "application/pdf" to the KnownContentTypes value
• Restart MS Exchange System Attendant

That’s it. Problem will be solved.

[Anantram]

Thank you Jerry. It was very helpful. Indeed im using exchange SP1.

[shagan]

I am having the same issue but with opening PDF files through OWA. I have made all of the changes and tried opening PDFs from both Windows 2000 Workstations and Windows XP Workstations and I get "nada"! Im currently running Exchange 2003 /SP2.

[TechSTL]

I am running SBS2003 SP2 and still cannot view a PDF in my browser via OWA. "PDF" was not listed in Level2FileTypes nor was "applicaiton/pdf" in Level2MIMETypes. I added "application/pdf," to the beginning of KnowContentTypes, restarted the Attendant without any luck. PDFs still seem to be handled like Level2 files.

Got any more ideas? TIA :)

PS. As previously mentioned, if I attach a PDF to a new OWA message, send it, and retrieve it with OWA, I'm able to view the PDF in the browser.