Open .pdf file in Edge

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Posted on by CU16080833-2

Goodday,

I'm struggling to open pdf files in the Edge browser. Anyone knows how to open local .pdf files within a Loop command?

When I use a "Go to web page" command and specify the URL with local file Edge fails over whitespaces which I can't seem to replace with %20 (anyone knows how to?).

When I use "Run Application" with Edge and local file as Command line argument it opens several tabs for each whitespace within the %filename%.

A replace text for the whitespace to %20 would probably suffice in this.

P.S. I want to keep Adobe as my standard PDF application; for this specific process I want to open these files in Edge.

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Power Automate Desktop

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VishnuReddy1997 2,656 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @Martvis88 ,

Instead of this you try changing the setting in System.Please find the steps for this.

1.Open Settings by pressing the Windows key + I.
2.Click on Apps.
3.Select Default apps from the left sidebar.
4.Scroll down and click on Choose default apps by file type.
5.Find the file type for PDF files (usually .pdf).
6.Click on the currently associated app.
7.Select Microsoft Edge from the list of available apps.

(Note:- if you got your solution you can mark as solution and gives kudos)

Thanks & Regards
Vishnu Reddy

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eetuRobo 4,539 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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As you suggested changing the whitespace to %20 will work when using Run application -action.

Since PAD uses % -signs to refer to variables you need to use extra % -sign if you want to replace empty space with %20.
So to Replace with: %%20 (that will replace the text to %20)
like so:

This worked for me with pdfs that has whitespaces in the name:

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CU16080833-2 58 on at

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Hi EetuRobo,

Thanks for the quick response! This Text action resolved the issue like you suggested!
Furthermore, I found out that to open a local file with Edge one should always add a "file:///" subtext to the URL-string. I'm now launching a new Browser for each file to handle, instead of working with tabs.

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