interactive pdf written from indesign will open in acrobat but not in preview

Preview informs me that “Apple could not verify “pdf Title” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.

By @Lavitas Macutis

Judging by this error, you're running into a problem that's being reported on macOS from time to time: some PDFs, for some reason, are being treated as an application, not a file. Most likely, Apple's pseudo-security inventions are acting up. I remember having this issue with Preview after installing a new macOS version several years ago.

Frankly, I don't remember what the solution was, if any. As far as I remember, that issue just went away by itself (or after a macOS update). You can try to google this error, I'm sure you'll get quite a few results from various Mac forums.

Preview is an image viewer and cannot be used to view interactive pdfs. That said, preview can open most pdfs, but it's not recommended.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/acrobat-pdf-received-showing-blank-pages-when-opened-with-mac-preview-or-printed-as-pdf-or-saved-as/m-p/14471278#M454210

It's hard to say, but worth noting is that when you export, you're exporting to Adobe PDF, so anything other than Acrobat is a crapshoot. Have you tried other PDF readers?