Viewing PDF in Windows forms using C#

Question

Is there any way to view PDF files in a Winforms tool? I've seen solutions such as converting the pdf file into images and showing them in an picture box. However, I am asking whether i can view the file as PDF. Is there any tool from adobe or from Microsoft that supports this?

Solution 1

you can use System.Diagnostics.Process.Start as well as WIN32 ShellExecute function by means of interop, for opening PDF files using the default viewer:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("SOMEAPP.EXE","Path/SomeFile.Ext");

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("shell32. dll")]
private static extern long ShellExecute(Int32 hWnd, string lpOperation, 
                                    string lpFile, string lpParameters, 
                                        string lpDirectory, long nShowCmd);

Another approach is to place a WebBrowser Control into your Form and then use the Navigate method for opening the PDF file:

ThewebBrowserControl.Navigate(@"c:\the_file.pdf");

Solution 2

i think the easiest way is to use the Adobe PDF reader COM Component

1. right click on your toolbox & select "Choose Items"
2. Select the "COM Components" tab
3. Select "Adobe PDF Reader" then click ok
4. Drag & Drop the control on your form & modify the "src" Property to the PDF files you want to read

i hope this helps

Solution 3

display PDF file into WinForms

Displaying a pdf file from Winform.

displaying a pdf on a windows form?

How to display PDF or Word's DOC/DOCX inside WinForms window?

Reading/Writing PDF Files in Visual C# Windows Forms

Solution 4

Web Browser control might work. http://ryanfarley.com/blog/archive/2004/12/23/1330.aspx

Also a bunch of pdf open source c# projects here http://csharp-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries

View more solutions

Comments

[Paul Sasik]

Just for viewing the IE browser control should work just fine.

[Saif al Harthi]

no he wants the windows form project he's doing hosting the reader , not launch it

[Majd]

Yes, as Saif said, I need to view the pdf file inside my application and not launch the PDF reader :)

[ArBR]

Use the WebBrowser Control into your form.

[Majd]

yes i think i'll go with that .. thx ..

[thewikus]

how can i resize this control so that it does not consume the whole form but stil resize when the form resizes?

[Soumyaansh]

Did you able to show the pdf inside WebBrowser Control ? I am trying the same thing but the application doesn't open it inside control rather it launces the third party PDF viewer application to show the pdf.

[V K]

@Soumyaansh were you able to fix the issue.As, I am facing the same problem.

[Haseeb]

1+ perfect this supposed to be answer :)

[Stephan Stamm]

I have this com component on my development machine. Does it also work on machines that do not have Adobe installed?

[Senthi Sri]

It will not work on a machine that does not have Adobe PDF Reader installed. You will get "Class not Registered" exception. Related Post: stackoverflow.com/questions/4041659/…