Embed PDF in Winforms

Good Day, Gentlemen:

I've been tasked with creating a screen that allows users to
double-click items from list of filenames. Each filename in the list
corresponds to a PDF file. On double-click, the corresponding PDF file
should be displayed. The catch is that the PDF viewer needs to be embedded
*inside* my WinForms app, as opposed to being externally launched. The user
needs to be able to scroll through the PDF and optionally print it.

Does anyone know how to do this? I don't mind purchasing a 3rd party
component, so long as it's a fully managed .NET component.

Help a brother out,

Jules

Mehdi
Fri Aug 12 10:11:40 CDT 2005

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 10:07:56 -0500, Jules Winfield wrote:

> I've been tasked with creating a screen that allows users to
> double-click items from list of filenames. Each filename in the list
> corresponds to a PDF file. On double-click, the corresponding PDF file
> should be displayed. The catch is that the PDF viewer needs to be embedded
> *inside* my WinForms app, as opposed to being externally launched. The user
> needs to be able to scroll through the PDF and optionally print it.

You can simply add the Acrobat ActiveX control to your toolbox and then
drag & drop it on your form. Easy. Or use the Web Browser ActiveX; but if
you only need to display PDF files, the Acrobat control is probably the
best option.

Jules
Fri Aug 12 11:02:33 CDT 2005

> You can simply add the Acrobat ActiveX control to your toolbox and then
> drag & drop it on your form. Easy. Or use the Web Browser ActiveX; but if
> you only need to display PDF files, the Acrobat control is probably the
> best option.

Thanks for the tip. Does this ActiveX control come pre-installed with
Windows or is it installed when the user first installs Acrobat?

Mehdi
Fri Aug 12 14:15:48 CDT 2005

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 11:03:52 -0500, Jules Winfield wrote:

>> You can simply add the Acrobat ActiveX control to your toolbox and then
>> drag & drop it on your form. Easy. Or use the Web Browser ActiveX; but if
>> you only need to display PDF files, the Acrobat control is probably the
>> best option.
>
> Thanks for the tip. Does this ActiveX control come pre-installed with
> Windows or is it installed when the user first installs Acrobat?

It's installed as part as the Acrobat Reader install so the user has to
have Acrobat reader on his PC. You should try to find some documentation
about this ActiveX (there must be something on the Adobe web site) and in
particular determine which version of Acrobat Reader is required to support
embeding its ActiveX control in a Windows application so that you can tell
you users which version they need.

SharpCoderMP
Fri Aug 12 17:22:23 CDT 2005

if you don't want to relay on acrobat you have to invest in third party
components there are few of them but they arent cheap. you may want to
look at pdftron which is very rich general purpouse library or pdf
rasterizer which is more specilized one. there are others so try
googling them.

Jules Winfield wrote:
>>You can simply add the Acrobat ActiveX control to your toolbox and then
>>drag & drop it on your form. Easy. Or use the Web Browser ActiveX; but if
>>you only need to display PDF files, the Acrobat control is probably the
>>best option.
>
>
> Thanks for the tip. Does this ActiveX control come pre-installed with
> Windows or is it installed when the user first installs Acrobat?
>
>