TMS TAdvPDFViewer not working on Windows 7 – any workaround?

[smooth99 0]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a Delphi VCL project using Delphi 12, and I’ve integrated the TMS TAdvPDFViewer component for displaying PDFs. Everything works fine on Windows 10 and 11. However, when I try to run the application on Windows 7, the PDF viewer doesn’t display anything — or crashes in some cases.

After contacting TMS support, they informed me that TAdvPDFViewer relies on newer Windows APIs that are not available on Windows 7, which explains the issue.

Unfortunately, I need Windows 7 compatibility due to deployment constraints in a client environment.

My questions:

1. Is there any workaround to get TAdvPDFViewer working on Windows 7? (e.g., additional DLLs, updates, or API backports?)

2. If not, what would be a good free or lightweight alternative PDF viewer that I can embed directly into a VCL application and works under Windows 7?

3. I would prefer something that can be embedded (not launching external apps), and ideally has basic support for loading and viewing PDFs.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or experiences you can share!

Best regards,

[Brian Evans 128]

Looks like it uses PDF support provided by the OS. So you need another PDF -> image engine/library.  

ref: https://support.tmssoftware.com/t/tms-vcl-pack-pdfviewer-not-function-on-some-users/24285

      https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.data.pdf.pdfdocument?view=winrt-26100 

 

There is PDFium (https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/) which is based on the PDF support in Chromium.

There are some Delphi components/source that use it - both commercial and opensource. 

 ex https://github.com/ahausladen/PdfiumLib

     https://winsoft.sk/pdfium.htm

 

Also Developer Express VCL has PDF components as well. Not sure of Windows 7 support but they have a demo you can use to check along with a 30 day trial. Just a bit pricey if not using a lot of the components / functionality they offer. 

https://www.devexpress.com/products/vcl/pdfviewer/

Edited August 4 by Brian Evans