Windows 10: Setting Microsoft Edge as the Zotero PDF viewer and using alternative as system viewer

wsfr
I have the SumatraPDF viewer as my system default but for Zotero PDFs it's missing a highlight function, so I need an alternative custom viewer for Zotero.

I can't see any lightweight open source PDF viewer available for PC, so with reluctance, I want to use Microsoft Edge as the highlighting is OK.

However, I cannot work out how to point Zotero to Microsoft Edge as the custom PDF viewer. I found this info (https://superuser.com/questions/950435/where-is-microsoft-edge-located-in-windows-10-how-do-i-launch-it) but it doesn't work for me.

Any advice appreciated (or suggestions for an alternative PDF viewer/annotator)
  • qqbb
    edited February 26, 2020
    Here are settings for an alternative program, PDF-XChange Editor, and how to combine it with SumatraPDF.

    Configuration:
    - Windows system default: SumatraPDF
    - Zotero custom viewer: PDF-XChange Editor

    Zotero custom viewer settings:
    "Edit" -> "Preferences" -> "General" -> "Open PDFs using" -> "Custom..."
    - Path: C:\...\PDFXEdit.exe

    PDF-XChange Editor settings:
    "Preferences" -> "Launch Applications" -> "New..."
    - Name: SumatraPDF
    - Path: C:\...\SumatraPDF.exe
    - Parameters: -page %p "%1"
    -> Button in lower UI toolbar allows launching current file in SumatraPDF.
    -> For creating a keyboard shortcut, see here.

    There is also an alternative workflow for SumatraPDF as the system default in combination with an external PDF editor, without setting a custom viewer in Zotero. But this has the shortcoming that Zotero currently doesn't support SumatraPDF for opening a specific page in a PDF file, see here.

    Edited: Removed description of the "extensions.zotfile.pdfExtraction.openPdfWin" preference. This is obsolete as of Zotfile 5.0.13, when Zotfile removed its zotero://open-pdf handler.
  • GitHubRulesOK
    Microsoft Edge was addressable via a 3rd party shim when it had text highlighting.
    New Edge is more easy to specify as an exe, however has dropped text highlighting.

    SumatraPDF Pre-Release version has always had highlighting text and blocks of text.
    SumatraPDF can be called directly by Zotero (with zotfiles) using a shim
    see https://forum.sumatrapdfreader.org/t/making-sumatrapdf-accept-page-numbers-from-zotero/2858
  • qqbb
    The new Microsoft Edge Chromium supports text highlighting. See this discussion for how to specify it as a custom PDF viewer in Zotero:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/88586/unable-to-open-zotero-link-to-pdf-with-page-number-in-microsoft-edge-chromium
  • qqbb
    If you're using Zotero's new PDF reader, you could consider Edge as a custom viewer for the ZoteroQuickLook add-on.
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