This whole thing makes me wish there was a verbose logging mode in XDP that lists which errors the program encounters to help people troubleshoot their issues.
Really do appreciate your efforts to help me so far.

Quote Originally Posted by Initiostar View Post
I've not seen this PDF issue before with Pro X18.5 or Pro X19 and have both installed and accessible, but clearly something is AWOL. I would note that if you run Xara in Admin mode, it does not allow you to drag and drop a file from Windows Explorer, the same is true for images too.

Maybe check (and eliminate that ) there are not any hidden issues with Windows 10 integrity, missing or corrupt files. With the Command Prompt App 'Run as Administrator' use 'sfc /scannow'

Click image for larger version.  Name: cmd_sfc_scannow.jpg  Views: 42  Size: 53.0 KB  ID: 131884

If Windows finds any issues, it will try to fix them; if there are no issues then at least you have confirmed Windows is OK.

Should Windows find any issues, I would run Xara again in Admin mode just once and recheck.
I ran sfc /scannow as admin and no issues were found. The PDF import/export still persists while running Xara as admin.

Quote Originally Posted by handrawn View Post
do you have security software that does more than 'just AV' - it is not unknown for some to lock out access even when an install is run in admin mode if they detect a process they consider suspicious
You mean programs like Malwarebytes and such running in the background? I don't have them.
In addition, I found that there's an option to start windows without antivirus running (Start > Power > Shift+Click Restart > it should be the last option in the list) and tried installing XDP in that mode and testing it, but to no avail.