When forcing a PDF to preview in a browser, it only shows the first page

[joelandamber]

Hi!
I'm running into an issue when previewing a pdf file in dropbox only shows the first page of the file (picture below for reference).

I use the "raw=1" extension at the end of the file, and so far that's worked well.  Now out of the blue, it seems to only display the first page of the file.

Is there any way of fixing this, or possibly use a different file extension to use to preview the file?  We send this file out to many potential clients so it needs to work easily on mobile and desktop browsers. I'd use "dl=1" except that really doesn't work at all on phones.

Thanks!
Joel

[Jay]

Hi @joelandamber, thanks for joining the Community!

We’re not experiencing this issue here when testing with a multipage PDF.

Could you try switching browsers to see if this helps? Otherwise, use incognito/private browsing mode without any extensions running, clearing your cache and even resetting your browser entirely.

Let me know how it goes!

[joelandamber]

Hi Jay, thanks for the quick reply!
It does seem to work in IE, but even after clearing the cache and trying incognito mode in Chrome, I still had the same issue.  I tried a bunch of different files (we have a lot), and had the same problem with all of them.

[Jay]

Most likely there is an issue loading the rest of the pages in Chrome, as it worked fine in another browser.

In your original image the other pages are shown as the dot shadows, which would indicate this.

Try disabling the extensions and plugins in Chrome to see if any of them are affecting the page loading.

[joelandamber]

Ok, that was it!!  I turned off the Google Docs Offline extension and it loaded.  Turned it on and it didn't load, turned it off and it did load.  So there seems to be something amiss with that extension I guess.  Either way it looks like this is solved, thank you!

[Jay]

Glad to hear that you found the extension which caused this issue, @joelandamber!

Enjoy your weekend!

[joelandamber]

Hi again... I'm back.  And I'm having the same issue again!  I disabled all the extensions (and even removed the Google Drive Offline extension that I thought was the issue), and the pdf files still aren't loading.  So all extensions are off, cleared the cache, tried incognito mode, and still nothing but those gray dots below the first page.  Still works in IE though.

Any other ideas?

Edit: when I do clear the cache and try it again, for a split second the scroll bar on the right is very short, making it look as though it's loaded the whole document (it's a long doc), but then snaps to a longer scroll bar since only 1 page ends up displaying.  So it's almost as though the whole document loads, but then it only displays the one page.

[HugoHugoHugo]

I experienced the same issue (but with another website). After investigation, it appears that this has something to do with SameSite cookies. 

You can fix it by setting this flag to Disabled then restart Chrome: 

chrome://flags/#same-site-by-default-cookies

Update: Found an issue in the Chromium bug tracker related to this problem: 

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=961617

[joelandamber]

Thanks for the insight, but unfortunately that workaround didn't help, it still only loaded the first page.

This apparently does affect other users, so whenever I send out these .pdf documents to clients, they also don't load for them.  

@Jay  any other thoughts or ideas?  Really need to get this solved soon!

[Walter]

Hi @joelandamber; sorry to hear you're still having issues with this and I'll be glad to have a further look into this for you.

To do so, can you clarify if you're running into this issue with all of your shared links, some or just one? 

Also, what browsers are your collaborators using when bumping into this issue with your PDF files not rendering properly as a whole? 

By the way, does this occur for all of your PDF files or a specific one? 

Let me know what you find and we'll take it from there.