Adobe Reader v7 and pdf.ocx 1

[carlgomerski]

Hi, I'm a developer working on a VB6 application, it installs Adobe Reader v4 and uses the pdf.ocx to display pdf files. As users have upgraded to V5/V6 they have still been able to display pdf's using the pdf.ocx.

Now v7 is out we're getting an (app generated) error: '372 Failed to load control 'Pdf' from pdf.ocx. Your version of pdf.ocx may be outdated. Make sure you are using the version of the control that was provided with your application.'

Had a quick look at the Adobe website/support forums and didn't find any solutions (though developers are having dramas with v7). I think pdf.ocx is not included with v7, not sure it's been replaced by anything?

Has anyone here had problems pdf.ocx in Adobe Reader v7?

 

[phantom49601]

I'm having the same issue. You can get version 7 to work by adding the reference to the adobe control. The problem is that this makes it incompatable with people using version 4, 5 or 6.

 

[carlgomerski]

I think (not 100% sure) there is a replacement ocx in Adobe Acrobat's SDK. Our company doesn't have a subscription to download it though.

We're thinking about purchasing a third party PDF viewer control. Hopefully this might solve some of the problems we have each time Adobe release a new version. We've advised our users to stay away from Adobe v7 for now.

 

[phantom49601]

Would I be allowed to distribute the pdf.ocx if I purchase the SDK?

 

[carlgomerski]

I'd assume so. Again I couldn't 100% confirm that the SDK includes a PDF.ocx. I couldn't find any offical doco, it's just what I read in other forums.

 

[CraigBest]

We just bought and downloaded the Acrobat 7 SDK and there's no PDF.OCX file in it. I'm going through the documentation now but it looks like they have decided to stop supporting an ActiveX solution. There's some new tool for .NET applications but we aren't ready for that.

I'm having the same problem and looking for a way to make this work from VB6 (SP5) with Acrobat 7. Any help is greatly appreiciated.

 

[phantom49601]

I have found a way to get it to work - well kind of work. Using the webbrowser activex object. You can open any of the Adobe reader versions. The downside is that you have to use the sendkey process to get the functionality to work. What this precludes is being able to print the PDF without user intervention. So it works but not as well as the PDF.ocx. I am having trouble getting Access to be able to size the WebBrowser activex object. Any thoughts?

Mark

 

[AccessUser22]

I'm having the same issue with my database. I've been using pdf.ocx to open adobe hyperlinked documents, but the users that have recently upgraded to 7.0, are not able to view the documents through the database.

Does anyone know the new reference for the adobe control that will work for users with 7.0? I'm thinking to make two versions of the front end, one for those users still on 6, and one for the users on 7 and set the references accordingly in both. Thanks!

 

[carlgomerski]

Use acropdf.dll, it comes with Adobe Reader v7.0. It calls the same functions as the old pdf.ocx.

 

[AccessUser22]

I think I tried that but still had problems. In any case, I finally located an article on Microsoft.com that mentioned the update to Adobe 7. I installed update 7.0.1 and then 7.0.2 and that solved my problem. I'm now able to open pdfs just as I was before.

Thanks!