Stata 19.5 + Adobe Acrobat Reader integration broken on macOS

[Bob Lee]

Hi all,

With a recent upgrade to Adobe Acrobat Reader for macOS, it seems that the integration between Stata 19.5 and Adobe Acrobat Reader has broken. Specifically, clicking on the link in a Viewer Window for the PDF to a particular section does not open the .pdf file in question; rather, it just opens Acrobat Reader, without opening any files.

It seems that the "/A" argument of the invoking command line for Acrobat Reader has been disabled or otherwise deprecated in the newest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, Adobe does not make it possible for Mac users to downgrade their version of Adobe Reader (only the current version is available on the downloads page).

Does anyone know of a workaround or fix? Seems like one would need to overload the -view mansection- command somehow in an .ado file for an alternate PDF viewer that can take in "jumps" until StataCorp fixes this.

Bob

macOS 15.4.1 (ARM)
StataMP 19.5
Adobe Acrobat Reader 2025.001.20476

[Rich Goldstein]

works fine on my set up but my Adobe version is quite different: 2018.009.20050 (all else the same but note that I am using MP(4) and the date on my Stata is 7 May 2025

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

It's not Stata, it's macOS. You need to give Stata full disk access under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access. I installed a fresh copy of Stata 19.5 on my Mac and Acrobat Reader (2025.001.20476) would not open the PDF entry for regress but Stata 18 would open the entry just fine so I figured it was a permissions issue. I gave Stata 19.5 full disk access and then Reader would then open PDF entries from Stata 19.5. NOTE: if you quit Acrobat Reader during your Stata session, trying to open a PDF entry within Stata will launch Acrobat Reader but for whatever reason Reader will not open the PDF entry. You have to relaunch Stata (you might have to quit Reader too if it's still open). It's best to just leave Reader open.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

I forgot to mention that Stata uses Applescript to communicate with Acrobat Reader, not command line options, on macOS. We investigated integrating with other PDF readers in the past, but Acrobat Reader was the only one that could jump directly to an entry in the PDF file.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

I forgot to mention that Stata uses Applescript to communicate with Acrobat Reader, not command line options, on macOS. We investigated integrating with other PDF readers in the past, but Acrobat Reader was the only one that could jump directly to an entry in the PDF file.

If this is of interest, Foxit PDF reader can be used to open a PDF directly to a bookmark or page reference from the command line.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

If this is of interest, Foxit PDF reader can be used to open a PDF directly to a bookmark or page reference from the command line.

That's true for the Windows version of Foxit but I don't think it's true for the macOS version. Even if it were possible to do that from the command line on macOS, you'd get a new instance of Foxit every time it's launched from the command line.