Why aren't my PDFs opening up in a new window?

The first thing is to check if the link has been set to open in a new window

• For links in the Text widget, double click on the link or select the link and click on the Link tool. This will bring up the Link tool window where you will click on the Target tab and check to see if the Target is set to New Window ( _blank ).
• For links in the side navigation, edit the navigation of the department and modify the entry by clicking on the three vertical dots to the right of the entry's name and selecting Modify.  Select  Advanced that is to the right of Basic at the top of the screen and check to see if the Target is set to New Window . If not change it to that, click Update and then Save.
• For links in widgets such as Button, Icon or Icon Group edit the widget and make sure the Target is set to New Window. 

The second thing that it could be is that some browsers, such as Chrome and Safari, could be set to handle PDFs differently. Both of those might automatically download the PDF no matter what is set in SchoolNow. Finally it could be the file name itself, if the file name has any of the characters that are not legal, which you can see a list of them in the Internet Legal Filename article, a pdf may not work correctly.