Skip to main content
waverlyr64991964
Participant
January 26, 2018
Question

Acrobat could not open "name of file".pdf

  • January 26, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 6278 views

I have Adobe Acrobat 9.0

I had an external hard drive that reformatted and erased all of my info. I got a recovery program to pull the information back.

Most of the pdf's that were recovered were fine but some of them I can not open. It "seems" to be files that I scanned in myself

onto my computer. When I try to open one of these files a box pops up that says:

"Acrobat could not open "name of file".pdf" because it is either not a supported file type or

because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't

correctly decoded).

To create an Adobe PDF document, go to the source application. Then print the document to Adobe PDF."

What do I need to do to correct this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 27, 2018

The only thing I can think of is to open the file using a plain-text editor, like Notepad, to make sure it's actually a PDF file.

The first line should be something like this:

%PDF-1.4

If it's not, it's either not a PDF file, or it got corrupt beyond repair.

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 27, 2018

PS. Acrobat 9 is a very old version, and not compatible with any current OS.
I would try installing the free Adobe Reader DC, which is the current version and should be able to open any (valid) PDF file, and then opening the file there.

waverlyr64991964
Participant
January 28, 2018

I already tried the free Adobe Reader DC it does not open these valid pdf's either.