PDF files automatically launch print dialog when opened in Foxit?

[kuzimmer]

New user here. I made some drawings, saved some views as .pdfs and sent to a friend. He noted that whenever he opened the files a print dialog was automatically launched. This seems to be specific to the Foxit PDF Reader. I tested this and found the same issue. I couldn’t find any Foxit setting to stop this.

I then viewed the saved .pdf file with Notepad++ and noticed near the bottom these lines:
"21 0 obj
<<
/S /Named
/Type /Action
/N /Print

endobj"

I removed the word “Print” , saved the file, and reopened it with Foxit. The print dialog no longer launches automatically.

Is there a reason the “Print” action is encoded into the saved .pdf?
Is there a setting that might allow me to turn off that “feature”? I don’t see one.

Thanks

[DaveR]

Perhaps the command is Print to PDF because most users would want to print the thing?

What sort of problem does it create?

[kuzimmer]

It’s not a huge deal, just a minor annoyance to have to close the print dialog every time you open a file when you only want to view it. If I’m sharing a file I’d like to save the viewer the annoyance.

I prefer .pdf for viewing rather than .png or .jpg, because of scaling.

[slbaumgartner]

I could be wrong, but I could not find any way to directly export pdf from the web version of SketchUp, only the print to PDF option on the print dialog. And indeed, a pdf generated that way has an embedded print command and pops up a print dialog when opened by the PDF viewers I have tried this on. This does strike me as a bug, though a silly one because SketchUp does generate a PDF file on your computer - just one with the print command embedded.

[Patchworks]

I noted this issue last year in another post related to a PDF printing bug (yet to be resolved)…but it didn’t get any traction, perhaps because I didn’t break it out as a separate post (note you have to open the post and read down to the next paragraph to see what I said about this Print problem):

Text Printing Bug

FWIW, I was able to replicate this problem in the new SU Lab environment. One thing that I failed to mention in the OP is that it’s even more frustrating because in the SU print preview (before you hit the Print to PDF button), everything looks normal and you can fiddle with the view and get it just the way you want to see it in the PDF file. It’s not until you create and view the PDF file that you see the problems. Then you have to go back and forth using trial and error to guess what the ap…

As noted by @slbaumgartner, the Print dialog (sometimes) forces you to save the PDF file before it brings it up in the viewer along with the Print dialog. So, yes, IMHO, this is a bug, not a feature. Note that I said it ‘sometimes’ forces you to save the PDF file before printing…but not always. Have you noticed this too? I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly when it does this, I just know that it doesn’t always force you to save the PDF file before it brings it up in the viewer.

[kuzimmer]

I’m not sure I follow. When I select “Print” my only option is to print to a PDF file (aka save the PDF file.)

[Patchworks]

Sometimes when I press the Print to PDF button, it doesn’t bring up the Save As dialog…it just opens it in my Adobe Reader…with the Print dialog open, of course. If I want to save the PDF, I then have to do a Save As to save the PDF. I’m on a Windows 10 laptop, don’t know if that has anything to do with it.

For fun, I just closed all my SketchUp windows & browser tabs & killed all the Chrome processes. When I restarted SketchUp and tried to Print, it brought up the Save As dialog. However, subsequent Print’s DO NOT…it simply opens the PDF file in my Adobe Reader. I found that it is actually saving the PDF file to my Downloads folder, with a name of model-name.pdf…always with the Print dialog open