Why does Preview.app lock up when I open Stata’s PDF documentation from the Finder?

Each PDF document in Stata’s PDF documentation set includes the complete table of contents for all of Stata’s documentation as bookmarks. This allows you to go to any table of contents entry in Stata’s PDF documentation from any single PDF document. Stata’s PDF documentation includes more than one thousand bookmarks. Preview.app can handle only a little more than one hundred bookmarks and will seemingly lock up if a PDF document includes more. Adobe Reader does not have any problems with a large number of bookmarks and is recommended for viewing Stata’s PDF documentation.

Stata uses Adobe Reader for viewing Stata’s PDF documentation opened from within Stata’s help system. If you want to open Stata’s PDF documentation from the Finder, you must set Adobe Reader as the default application for opening PDF documents. To set Adobe Reader as the default application for opening all PDF documents on your Mac, select any PDF document from the Finder, select File > Get Info from the menu bar, select Adobe Reader from the Open with: popup menu in the Get Info window, and then click on the Change All... button. If you only want to set Adobe Reader as the default application for just Stata’s PDF documentation, select all of Stata’s PDF documentation from the Finder, select File > Get Info, and then select Adobe Reader from the Open with: popup menu.