About PDF files
Microsoft 365 now has built-in support for simple editing and integration with Adobe Cloud for the full set of features. This article focuses on other Adobe apps, such as Photoshop.
Currently SharePoint Online does not support opening Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/Premiere/etc., documents directly in the app or Creative Cloud on the web. You can view Photoshop and Illustrator documents in SharePoint’s file viewer, but not others. When clicking on an Adobe files, it will be downloaded to your File Explorer, and from there you can open the document in the Adobe InDesign/Premiere application. If you want to save your edits back to SharePoint you have a few options.
Method 1 – Download the document, open it in the app, then upload a new version
This is the most foolproof method and allows you to find your document using metadata. However, it requires some extra steps when editing, compared with Office files. You may also run into issues with broken links to external assets if your InDesign or Premiere document use these.
- Download the file
- Open it in Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/Premiere
- Edit and save your changes
- Upload the edited file to the same workspace from where you downloaded the document
Method 2 – Sync with OneDrive
You can sync any document library to your local machine using OneDrive. You may however run in into issues if, for example, your InDesign document have links to other files. By default the local storage location for OneDrive is in the user profile folder, which is unique for each user. Because of this links will not work when another user edits the same file.
To get around this you need to ensure that the OneDrive storage location is the same for all users working with Adobe apps, for example C:\OneDrive. Obviously, this will not work with multi-user computers such as thin clients, kiosks or terminal servers where everyone cannot share the same OneDrive folder.
If you have setup OneDrive already you need to unlink your account, move your files to the desired location and sign in again, this time changing the default storage locations. This can be done manually by both Windows and Mac users with administrative priveliges.
An IT admin can also use Group Policy to configure this for Windows computer in the domain.
Method 3 – View in File Explorer
As a last resort, you may consider using the View In File Explorer feature, available in SharePoint Online for Microsoft Edge, on Windows. Though keep in mind that it does not support the latest security best practices and will not maintain version history.
Summary
Version history | Links to external files2 | Modern authentication | Metadata | |
Download | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
OneDrive | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
File Explorer | No | Yes | No | No |
Note
- When you edit an Adobe InDesign file, it will create a temporary file that starts with a tilde (~). When you close Adobe InDesign the temporary file will be deleted.
- InDesign and Premiere documents can link to external files instead of embedding a duplicate.
Get things in order with MetaShare
MetaShare’s unique, user-friendly interface will help your users saving their documents in the right place and make it easy for the organization to find them later, using Metadata. Metadata come with a number of benefits, even for other file types than Microsoft Office.