Microsoft has long used its own rendering engine to display PDFs in its Edge browser, but that will change next month.
Microsoft and Adobe announced that, in March, the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine will be embedded into Edge on Windows 10 and 11 to power its PDF viewer. Edge for macOS won’t be affected immediately, but Microsoft says the change is coming “in the future.”
Organizations with only managed devices will have the option of engaging in the change through Intune policy for now. For everyone else, the update will be automatic and irreversible. As per the announcement the legacy PDF engine will be deprecated from Edge in March 2024.
one in blog postMicrosoft noted, “The built-in Microsoft Edge PDF solution will remain free. Users who want more advanced digital document features, such as the ability to edit text and images, convert PDFs to other file formats, and combine files, You can purchase an Acrobat subscription that enables access to these advanced features inside Microsoft Edge through an extension. People with an existing Adobe Acrobat subscription can use Acrobat extensions inside Microsoft Edge at no additional cost.
The announcement also noted that it is “part of an ongoing Adobe and Microsoft initiative that is transforming digital work and life by bringing Adobe’s industry-leading PDF, e-signature and document automation tools directly to Microsoft users. Microsoft This PDF experience in Edge joins an already extensive set of Adobe PDF and eSign integrations across Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and more.
