Published on October 9, 2007

When you attempt to open a .PDF file that came as a mail attachment in Windows Mail, the following error may occur:

Unable to open .PDF file attachments directly from Windows Mail in Windows Vista

Symptom

When you attempt to open a .PDF file that came as a mail attachment in Windows Mail, the following error may occur:

This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel.

This may happen even though you have Adobe Reader installed. Also, the same file may open correctly when saved to disk and then viewed.

This article applies to Windows® Vista systems with Adobe Acrobat Reader (v8.1 as of this writing) installed.

Proposed solution

This error occurs if the file type association for .PDF is incorrect. You can fix this using the steps below.

Removing .PDF file type association

Download unassoc.zip and save it to Desktop
Extract the contents to a folder and run the file unassoc.exe
Select .PDF from the list and click Delete file type
The file type association for .PDF is now removed.

Repairing Adobe Acrobat Reader

Right-click on the Adobe Reader shortcut and click Run as administrator.
From the Help menu in Adobe Reader, click Repair Adobe Reader Installation.

The repair process should fix the .PDF file type association. Restart Windows and see if you're able to open .PDF attachments directly from Windows Mail.