PDF Won’t Open: “Please Wait…” Message, How To Open

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Pdf please wait

Did you want to open a PDF document on your Mac or iOS device (iPhone or iPad) and you could not view the PDF document? Instead, you go the message above while attempting the view the PDF in your browser. The message says: “Please wait…If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document.”

See also: What is .Pages?

I had this problem recently and it is very frustrating. PDF won’t display. I tried to open it on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Still, I received the same message. I tried to download the PDF document on my Mac and open it with Preview, still no luck. However I was able to view the PDF document. You may experience this problem too. Did you try to open a PDF document in Safari or PDF preview in Mail? And you got this message? This short article explains what I did to resolve this problem:

Please Wait… View Your PDF Document

These type of PDF documents are called Dynamic XFA. XFA stands for XML Form Architecture. As of currently, Safari (and also Chrome and Firefox) do not support these type PDF forms thus Dynamic XFA based PDF documents cannot be opened in browsers.

You can view these type of PDFs by downloading and installing Adobe Reader on your Mac. However, you cannot view these type of PDFs, as of now, on your iOS device, the iOS Adobe Reader app currently does not support this.

macOS

  1. Go to this URL: https://get.adobe.com/reader/
  2. Click Download Now. And then follow the installation instructions.
  3. After you complete the installation process, now go to the PDF document and save it on your computer.
  4. And now open it with “Adobe Acrobat Reader DC”.

iOS (iPhone or iPad)

As stated above, currently you cannot open these type of PDFs on your iPhone. You need to open it on your computer. Downloading and installing the Adobe Acrobat Reader app on your iPad or iPhone will not help you open these PDFs. When you try, it will say “this form requires Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for Mac or Windows”. Currently only desktop version of Adobe reader supports this.

See also: Open, Edit & Create a Keynote File (.Key) In Windows & Microsoft PowerPoint

Dr. Serhat Kurt worked as a Senior Technology Director. He holds a doctoral degree (or doctorate) from the University of Illinois at Urbana / Champaign and a master’s degree from Purdue University. Here is his LinkedIn profile.

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13 thoughts on “PDF Won’t Open: “Please Wait…” Message, How To Open”

  1. Go into System Preferences, then into Extensions, then Finder and uncheck “create PDF”. It will then open the PDFs.

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