pdf files do not open. changed to pdf.exe

[UnaIsla]

I am new to the Mac so....
In Safari, I go to a website and click on a pdf file to download it. It puts it in the download stack but it changes its name extension to "pdf.exe" If I click on it, it tells me:

“EWC08_Agenda_03-18-08a-1.pdf.exe” is a Windows application which was downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

If I say yes, it launches Parallels/WindowsXP but nothing happens.

The only thing I can do to read it is remove ".exe" from the file name, then, when I click on it, it works.

How can I fix this so it opens it first time around or eventually gives me the option to open/save as in Windows?

Thanks for your help and patience.

 

[yellow]

PDF files are not .EXE files. They are .PDF files.

.EXE files are Windows executables.

So.. either that is a piece of malware that you probably just installed on your Windows VM in Parallels, or you can change the name of the file you downloaded to simply have a .PDF extension (removing the .exe) and double click it and it will open with Adobe Reader.

Assuming you have Adobe Reader installed, of course.

Personally, that looks fishy to me.

 

[emw]

Does this happen with all PDF files, or just the one you mention below?

If you hover over the link to the PDF file in Safari and look in the Status Bar, does it show the file ending in ".pdf" or ".exe"?

Since you could remove the .exe and get it to launch, there may just be something odd with the encoding or something that's throwing Safari off. You could also try using a different browser (say Firefox) to see if you get the same result.

 

[yellow]

It's possible that wherever the OP is getting that, they're supplying a self-extracting PDF & PDF Viewer Installer, I suppose.

 

[UnaIsla]

the same website:http://www.dptechnology.com/en/community_world_conference.asp
has several downloads at the bottom of the page. None of them work on my mac. All of them work on my pc.
On the mac, the download systematically put add a ".exe" at the end of the file during the download. I have to go to the download stack, view them in finder and remove the ".exe" then double-clicking open them up....

 

[emw]

Interesting. I get the same result, but they download no problem using Firefox.

 

[notjustjay]

Could be that the web server in question has MIME types configured incorrectly (e.g application/octet-stream). This causes Safari to interpret it as a binary and automatically adds the EXE extension. (This guy had a similar issue except with text files, and it was because of server MIME types.

 

[yellow]

I downloaded one of them (in Safari) and just stripped off the .exe portion and it opened just fine in Adobe Reader on the Mac side.