How to open XFA-based PDF forms on Firefox and Chrome

Last update: Fri Apr 25 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Applies to:
Experience Manager 6.5

Topics:
Adaptive Forms

CREATED FOR:

Admin

Issue

The built-in PDF viewer introduced with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome do not support XFA-based PDF forms. Therefore, XFA-based PDF forms do not open in later versions of Firefox and Chrome.

Solution

To use XFA-based PDF forms on Firefox and Chrome, perform the following steps to configure Firefox and Chrome to open PDFs using Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.

NOTE

Ensure that you have Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat installed on your machine.

Configure Firefox

In Firefox, choose Tools > Options.
In the Options dialog, click Applications.
In the Applications tab, type PDF in the search field.
For Portable Document Format (PDF) content type in the search result, select Use Adobe Acrobat (in Firefox) from the Action drop-down list.
Click OK.
Restart Firefox.

Configure Chrome

In Chrome, go to chrome://plugins/.
Click Disable under Chrome PDF Viewer, and click Enable under Adobe PDF Plug-In.

For more information, see Adobe PDF plug-in documentation by Google.

NOTE

LiveCycle ES4 provides support for rendering XFA-based forms into HTML5 such that the forms can be opened in browsers with HTML5 support, including those running on mobile devices like iPad. The HTML5 rendition of the forms maintains the layout of the form design and supports most form logic (such as JavaScript, form calc, and form validations) embedded in the XFA form template. This way, your technology investments in XFA forms are carried over easily to devices where running of the Adobe Reader plugin is not feasible.
For more information, see LiveCycle product documentation.

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