duplicate downloaded files in downloads folder

I'm new to Windows 11 have build 22000.795.

I am hoping I am missing a setting to stop this issue.
I need to open and read or open and save a lot of PDFs daily for work. Every PDF I'm opening on a website is being copied to my Downloads folder even if I am not using Save As to stick it in a folder to save it. If I am saving it to a folder there is a duplicate saved in Downloads as well.

I do have the default location for downloads to be the Downloads folder but don't need all these PDFs there. It wasn't an issue with Win XP.
No duplicates and no downloads just from opening and reading PDFs online.

thank you

Sounds like a setting in your pdf reader. Try changing it or just try a different reader.

If using Edge to open .pdfs try the 'settings/downloads/ask me for each option', should allow you to open for reading without auto saving to the downloads folder, you can still choose to save as from the reading pane menu if needed.
Or am I confused as to your requirements?

I don't use Edge, I am using Firefox and Adobe PDF Reader

Try this. Search 'default'- in search results click default apps-scroll to the bottom and select 'choose apps by default type-find .pdf in the list and change it to Adobe

I'd take a closer look at those duplicates, a folder cannot contain 2 or more files of the exact same name, there has to be at least one character difference. It's not a new thing with Win11, goes back a long time, learned it back in early '90s with MS-DOS with Win3.1 running on it. I usually see (1) or (2), added to a file name or sometimes get a popup warning that it already exists, allows to rename one if wanting both, I've lost files a few times by not paying attention.

In Firefox -settings -general, scroll down to Applications and under content type make sure 'Open in Firefox' is selected and not 'save file'

The copies of the PDFs are being saved in the folder that I put them in using Save As but also a copy is being saved in Downloads. I do not always need to save copies, a lot of the time I just need to read them and do not want to download them. This issue wasn't happening on my Win XP computer.

I tried changing settings in Firefox to open PDFs in Firefox instead of Adobe reader and it still downloaded a copy to my Downloads folder.

If you want to open a pdf in FF you have to change the default app for the file type. Go to settings-system-apps-default apps-scroll to bottom-select defaults by file type-scroll down to .pdf-toggle to FF

Lee151 said:

The copies of the PDFs are being saved in the folder that I put them in using Save As but also a copy is being saved in Downloads. I do not always need to save copies, a lot of the time I just need to read them and do not want to download them.

Click to expand...

I don't use FireFox, but to me, it appears you have a setting somewhere in there that says download PDFs automatically, so it would reason to find that setting and adjust. Anyway, I did a Google ("stop firefox from automatically downloading pdfs") and found this...


No offense, but I have to say....

Lee151 said:

This issue wasn't happening on my Win XP computer.

Click to expand...

Yours isn't a "Windows" issue it's a "browser (Firefox)" issue.

Windows XP = 2001. In 2001 XP and Firefox were nowhere near the tech they are today

Windows 11 = 2021. And Microsoft still doesn't own Firefox or install it by default.

Anyway, I'm not guaranteeing that fix will work, just posting a suggestion. Again, I don't use Firefox so I can't say how to do anything.

See the Firefox Guidance: View PDF files in Firefox or choose another viewer | Firefox Help

As per my #7 post. Opened a sample PDF file from the net in FF and with the correct setting it opens in the browser and doesn't download it automatically.

To stop the automatic download I had to change the setting in Firefox to "Always Ask" then I got a choice to open and read without it downloading. When I had it set to always open with FF or with Adobe it automatically downloaded copies.

Going from Firefox 50 something to 90 something has been quite the adjustment. I was googling stop Win 11 from automatically downloading PDFs instead of stopping Firefox.

thank you