title: Browser Won't Request Latest PDF from Server
body: <p>I have a PDF on Windows Server IIS web server, where users request it with IE8/9/10 using HTTP call like this...</p>
  
  <pre><code>http: // mydomain.com / somefolder / myFile.pdf
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>First hit will download the file no problem.  <strong>Problem</strong>: if admin updates the PDF, and user goes back to reload it, IE only shows local cached version and will NOT request a new version from the server.</p>
  
  <p>I have confirmed that on 2nd request, IE8, IE9, and IE10 do not call the server at all for the PDF file.  Not even a conditional request (e.g., if-updated-since).  Confirmed this using Fiddler and WireShark.  But I never explicitly set the caching with Max-Age or anything.  I have no caching set for that folder.  I would prefer not to set cache to "expire immediately".  It does this for Word DOC's also.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a bug in Internet Explorer that makes it ALWAYS use local copies of static docs (e.g., PDFs, DOCs) no matter what?</p>
  
  <p><strong>These ideas do NOT work:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p><kbd>F5</kbd>, <kbd>CTRL</kbd>+<kbd>F5</kbd>, <kbd>SHIFT</kbd>+<kbd>F5</kbd></p></li>
  <li><p>Clear the browser history and cache using the DELETE HISTORY button.  Why this actually doesn't clear ALL the cache is beyond me.  I have everything selected for deletion except passwords.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p><strong>The only ways I know around this are:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Manually delete the PDF locally because the "DELETE HISTORY" button does not delete the local version.  But most users are not that savvy.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use Firefox but that's not a company-approved browser.  Don't get me started.</p></li>
  <li><p>Set server caching to Expire Immediately, but pdfs are mixed in folders with web pages and I prefer not to do this.  I want to use caching max age for other things like CSS, scripts, images, etc..</p></li>
  <li><p>Add a fake query string to the end like ?id=1, and that works, but the business line has 100's of docs each with links inside the docs that would have to be updated.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use FIDDLER "clear cache" button or CCleaner, but most users in my company (70k employees) are not developers and can't have that software.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Is there a real solution for this, to make IE behave like I thought it would?</p>