Opening PDFs from Smartsheet on iPAD drops parts of the drawing

We have noticed that our iPad users have issues when opening PDF files from the Smartsheet app. If opening a PDF drawing with markups (from Adobe or Bluebeam), the iPad only displays flattened entities in the PDF, not drawing markups. They are saved to the PDF and open correctly on external PDF viewers. They also open correctly on Android mobile Smartsheet.

There are some other oddities also. These markups can be selected on the iPad, so they are saved to the file and are selectable, just not visible. The thumbnail preview of the attachment shows the entities as well. We've seen some text fields that were added as a markup that appear on the iPad mobile Smartsheet version, but it rotates the text 90°.

We can flatten our PDFs before uploading them, but would much prefer to avoid the extra step as well as losing the future editability of these files.

Is there a way to have these files open in an external viewer? Or a setting in Smartsheet to make these invisible entities visible?

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Genevieve P.

Hi @Shawn_Durfee

If you're experiencing something different between the Android and Apple versions of the Smartsheet application, it would be useful to have two screen recordings showing how the PDFs open up on the different devices sent to Smartsheet Support so they can troubleshoot this with you.

A PDF file will open on a mobile device by clicking it, but then you should have an option from that page to download the attachment to your Files. I'd try downloading the file on to the iPad to see if this helps show the markups.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Shawn_Durfee

ipad version.jpg

android version.jpg

I tried doing a video, but the file was too large. Here's a photo of the Android vs Apple versions of the same PDF. We've been experimenting and believe that the iPad is just using iBooks or Safari as a default PDF viewer. If we install Adobe or Bluebeam, the PDF opens and looks correctly. The problem is that we can't make Smartsheet open PDFs in Adobe or Bluebeam by default. It insists on using iBooks/Safari/whatever the default viewer is.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Shawn_Durfee

Thank you for this information and follow-up! Yes, I agree - if you have another application that can open up your PDF (such as Adobe) then I would recommend downloading the PDF and using that instead.

In regards to changing the default PDF viewer, please submit your feature request to the Product team by creating an Idea Post in the Smartsheet Product Feedback and Ideas topic here in the Community. This will allow other users to vote on your enhancement idea!

Cheers,

Genevieve

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