[Maverick]

I was initially thrilled with the new Blackberry which was slimmer and had a flash card slot (albeit 5 years too late). The Browser was much improved, so sites like finance.yahoo.com, bloomberg.com, and fxstreet.com looked better than before. Music was a great new touch, and after porting over a few movies I was stunned with the quality. However the Roxio software for the conversion is such a kludge, writing frames 1 by 1 to a memory card over a USB connection for an entire movie was not cool. Took 1.5 hours. I found a better 3PG Video rip software call Xilisoft 3GP. With a couple of settings works awesome. Now I can write output files directly back to the hard drive (20Mins), and when they are finished, I copy them to the card in 4 minutes flat.

But here's the real problem...

However after buying a 4GB media card, and dumping my PDFs on it, I found no way to access the PDFs in a useful way through the BB interface. Where do I put "Documents" like word, excel, and PDFs so that I can Access them Later? The PDF viewer will not let me save PDF attachments to the media card. There is however a folder for music, a folder for movies, pictures, and even a worthless ringtone folder. Would it have cost any more to add a "my documents" folder ? I need to store PDFs that I can reference at any time. I should also be able to open an email with a PDF attachment, and do a Save to.... the "Documents" folder on the media card, shouldn't I? What a waste of a media card. So I ask you, Where can I keep my stuff so that I can access it ? Well on someone else's server of course.

The 3rd party office PDF readers want to charge you an obscene amount of money for a subscription, so that I can pull PDFs from their server somewhere and blow out my bandwidth every month. Why bother with a media card, if I have to send all my stuff to timbuktu and then get stiffed for an extra $80 in bandwidth at the end of the month. No Thanks.

And whats up with the lousy PDF browser built into the 8830. It's Crap. Can't read any of the text without enhancing each and every square inch of the page with a little magnifying glass. Terrible. Can't RIM and Adobe get their ****e together and release a PDF reader for BB.

For whats supposed to be a business communication device, RIM has shot way below the curve here. Very very weak.

And while I'm on a roll... whats with the undocumented key commands for the PDF viewer? keys for next page, goto, rotate, where are these in the manual ? If I didn't spend 3 hours screwing around with it, how would I have ever found these things out ?

..... And don't even get me started on the blackberry support line.
after ten years of BB, we can finally read a PDF. Woo Hoo.

The only way we're going to get this fixed is to bithc. So if you hate this too, then email BB about when they are going to fix this.

Thanks.

[Glockman49]

You can save PDF's to your media card. You have to email the PDF files to your phone them save them as files which go in your pictures folder. You have to name each file as you save them or it will try and overwrite the files.

[fprioli]

I saw the response about saving your email attachment to my media card by saving it through pictures. I open the attachment but there isn't any option for save. Can you enlighten me? Thanks.

[Maverick]

I probably was not clear enough in my original post.

PDFs sent to my Blackberry via email are viewable, albeit with a crippled PDF reader, and can be saved to the microSD media card but only 1 page at a time, and only as a jpeg picture, not as a PDF. Use the open attachment to open the PDF, then use save, and direct the jpeg to the Media Card.

My problem is opening PDFs that are sitting on the media card. For example I have 10 PDFs of reference material on the Media card in a folder called "PDFs" or "Pictures". I would like to open these PDFs at any time and reference that information. Or double check the PDF information before I sent it out to a customer. There is no way to do this. There is no menu option to open a PDF from the Media Card.

This is the problem.

[BlackBerry.est08]

I probably was not clear enough in my original post.

PDFs sent to my Blackberry via email are viewable, albeit a crippled PDF reader, and can be saved to the microSD media card. Use the open attachment to open the PDF, then use save, and direct the PDF to the Media Card.

BUT...that has never been my problem. that has always worked.

My problem is opening PDFs that are sitting on the media card. For example I have 10 PDFs of reference material on the Media card in a folder called "PDFs" or "Pictures". I would like to open these PDFs at any time and reference that information. Or double check the PDF information before I sent it out to a customer. There is no way to do this. There is no menu option to open a PDF from the Media Card.

This is the problem.

So your problem is opening PDF's you have saved on your MicroSD card? If that is the case, then to open those PDF's all you have to do is go into Media Player, press the BlackBerry button then select Explore then locate your PDF documents. I don't think PDF's open without a third party software

[Maverick]

Hey est08.

You are correct, there is an explore menu but it does nothing useful.

1. If I receive an email with a PDF I can use the "Open attachment" menu to open the PDF with the built-in preview program built into the 8830. So the PDF does open without a third party app installed on the BB. But once I open it I cannot save it to the media card. There is a "Save Page" menu item but that literally saves 1 page of a multi-page PDF, as a jpeg (Not a PDF) to the Media Card.

2. If I use the "explore" menu to open the same PDF from the Media Card, I can navigate to the PDF on the Media Card, but when I select a PDF the 8830 just sits there with a weird white screen and does nothing. So it will NOT open. There is no "Open attachment" menu item when in the Media Player mode.

3. If I receive an email with a PDF, and I have Beamberry PDF reader installed, i get a new menu selection called "Open with Beamberry" which will open the PDF attachment properly (and display properly) but again will not allow saving to the Media Card. Beamberry saves the PDF to their server, which was the only way to do it before blackberrys got media cards, but now that we do have media cards (MicroSD and MircoSDHC 4GB) we should be able to save to the card. Beamberry is execellent. Except it has no "Save to... Location" menu. This OK when you are opening a few small PDFs here and there, but if you have 50 PDFs each of which are 5MB to 15MB, you will be waiting a long time to open them over the network, and you will also blow out your monthly bandwidth.

4. Beamberry does not open PDFs from the Media Card, or the internal memory. It will only open PDFs from their network server.

So, bottom line the "Explore" menu does not do what it should. RIM should be ashamed of the cluster they created with PDF Opening/Saving

[Maverick]

Just received an email from Beamberry. They are aware of the problem, and they are working on adding the missing functionality, and "it will be available in a future release".

This is probably the best way to go, as the crew in waterloo is too busy buying hockey teams to notice the junk they are pushing out the door. Jim Balsillie should take 100K of the 240 million he's spending on the Nashville Pretators and hire 5 programmers for 2 weeks, and get this crap viewer fixed. Everything they do at RIM is micro incremental. It took 10 models of Blackberrys to get a decent browser, 15 to get a music player, and it'll probably take 20 models to get a viewer that works properly.

The built-in viewer just has too many limitations. The lack of multi-page thumbnails, the not being able to read anything without "Enhacing" every square inch of the page, once enhanced, not being able to move around the page. Even if they add an open, and save command, this thing will hardly be usable.

So Beamberry is it.
It can view PDF, Excel, Word Docs, and Powerpoint, and will probably be more than what most people will need.

I will update here when I get notified from Beamberry. I would expect a month wait at worst and we should have a solution.
Thanks.

[socoduce]

Please up date us on how wel Beemberry works! I'm very interested to see if there is a solution that is worth the cost.

[rdj]

...For example I have 10 PDFs of reference material on the Media card in a folder called "PDFs" or "Pictures"... There is no menu option to open a PDF from the Media Card.

One thing you can do is Explore the memory card from the Media player and beam the PDF file to a desktop machine via Bluetooth and read/review the PDF there.

Another thing you can do which doesn't require anything but the Blackberry itself is to compose an email message to yourself, attach the PDF from the memory card, and send it to yourself. You should then be able to view the PDF attachment using the Blackberry internal viewer.

(I do npt know whether you can get away with simply composing an email message, attaching the PDF file, and viewing it as a draft message without sending it. Haven't tried that yet.)

I do have Beamberry installed, and although I tried "Save" and "View" options, Beamberry reported that the particular PDF file I was using as a test had an "unsupported file format". That is odd because the internal Blackberry PDF reader was able to understand the same file, attached as it was to an email.

-^-rdj-^-

[jayloff]

I just got the 8830 Pearl and am very frustrated with all the above. I'm going to Motorola Q, you can save and view from an "explorer" enviroment. It even has a camera.

[fprioli]

I have just recently viewed the Dataviz.com website and they are going to release a BB version of "Documents to go" and that should eliminate our problems, I hope.

[Maverick]

I doubt this will help with PDFs. Looks like it will only do word, excel, and powerpoint. I don't see any reference to PDFs. Beamberry already opens word, excel, and powerpoint as well as PDF.

I think you should put your bets on Beamberry.

Thanks.

[volsfan0911]

I just got the 8830 Pearl and am very frustrated with all the above. I'm going to Motorola Q, you can save and view from an "explorer" enviroment. It even has a camera.

Been there, done that. Had 3 die within 10 months (software deaths). Slow, battery hog and completely unrealible in my experiences. VZW's 'replacement matrix' mandated that I get a battery hogging brick with WinBlowz and the "random shutdown" option engaged - a.k.a. Treo 700wx. Obviously, I hate it too. Waiting for 8310 to hit AT&T then I'm leaving VZW. Not going to wait for their 8130 and they'll probably cripple that anyway...............

[masmusic]

Beamberry released updated software on 9/29. BeamBerry - View, Print, Store BlackBerry e-mail attachments

It is a free download for now as beta. I have never used it before, but just downloaded OTA without problem and played with it for a while with some pdfs. It works very nicely and the viewer is excellent.

Maverick, it stores documents on Beamberry's own servers, so I still don't see a way to save pdfs to my card, but perhaps others will see what I missed. If I am right, then you will still have bandwith issues, but the access to the documents is quick, you can attach them to e-mails, and create folders (in addition to the default folders).

I'm not sure what the price will be eventually.

[sandeep4080]

Any update on the solution to the main problem being discussed in this thread?

[Maverick]

Hey Sandy.
No Solution as of yet. I thought Beamberry would have fixed it in the latest release, but I was wrong. Keep your fingers crossed.

[Maverick]

All,

I spent the last 2 days doing a re-review of all the PDF reader solutions out there, in case they have improved from the last time I checked. It really wasn't pretty. I am sorting out the review over the next couple of days, and will post for everyone to see.
Thanks.

[disneyandbond]

Hi, just wondering if you had a chance to pick a favorite PDF reader. I too have been disappointed with how useless the default bundled reader is for viewing files - way too small to read, and when you zoom then you need to enhance and then you can't scroll without repeating the process. Argh!

[TomsCruise]

Where can I find Beamberry? Sorry for the newb type question but wew all have to start somewhere...Tom

[Bla1ze]

BeamBerry, google is your friend

[TomsCruise]

Will BeamBerry allow you to save a doc to your card?

[Bla1ze]

The FAQ on the site answers the questions you are looking for but the short and sweet answer is no, it's actually held within the beamberry servers, thats why they recommend this

The BeamBerry public service is not intended for usage with documents of a highly confidential nature.

[mercap]

I am anxious to see how this story ends. I have been keeping an eye on Beamberry to see if they have what it takes to view pdf's. I am also interested in viewing .tif files. Being able to save a .pdf or .tif attachment in its original format would be great. I tried the Dynoplex Masterdoc program which was almost impossible to navigate. The viewer didn't work very well and using their servers was impossible. I also went through 6 Moto Q's over the last couple years. The Q did have a decent attachment viewer for emails, but every other aspect of the phone is worse than the BB's. If we can get a decent attachment viewer / management system we should be all set.

[anomalyberry]

I'm a noob when it comes to the BB as well, so here is my noob question. Wouldn't subscribing to the unlimited data plan alleviate the issue with blowing out your bandwidth?

[Maverick]

Absolutely, an unlimited Data Plan would help. However, if you have 100 PDF documents that you reference, and each of them are 10MB a piece, you will be waiting a very long time to get them loaded. And if you have a client on the phone, and you are trying to pull up the PDF datasheet and have your client waiting on the other end of the line, it's double the fun.