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"This is not a valid Portable Document File (PDF)..." random error in Photoshop

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For the past couple of months I've been getting this error: "this is not a valid Portable Document File (PDF) document. It cannot be opened." error when I'm NOT trying to open anything. I'd say it's happened maybe 10 times over the last couple of months and 9 of those times, it's happened when I'm waking the computer from sleep. I can't seem to figure out any pattern to it. It's like it's trying to open a file on it's own but it doesn't show in the recent list and I'm not seeing any action that could be doing this.

Any ideas?

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ChangemakerCreative

Inspiring

I’m joking that there’s a ghost on my Mac who tries to learn Photoshop at night, because every morning, there’s this error in Photoshop. Also, the Actions panel is open usually. (Don’t judge my screenshot, I don’t really do much in PS, so my panels are messy)

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Patty and Bob Couse-Baker

Participant

Same here, MacOS Tahoe 26.5.1, All Adobe software up to date. Uncommanded operations have a strong malware vibe, since the computer is doing something I didn’t ask it to do. These pop up when I didn’t have Photoshop open, but then suddenly PhotoShop is open. Most recently I was reading a World Cup story in the Times, then bang. This is some sort of unpatched back-end problem deep in Adobe code.

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Cheerful_amazement5C39

Participating Frequently

Corporate enshittification.
Adobe is on the backend of relevance.
Theyre just pumping the stock now.
Its 5 years later and they havent even addressed the issue, much less fixed it.
And they never will.

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100pk

Inspiring

2025 MacOS Sequoia 15.5; Adobe Photoshop CC 26.7.0

Still this error. Purge clipboard grayed out.

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LB219

Participant

Brand new mac studio, clean OS install, new photoshop install, same error. Only now I get it like 3 times in a row. Adobe, please stop giving me useless Ai functionality and just give a stable photoshop.

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H Chinaski

Inspiring

Now it's 2025, more than five years since the thread was started and more than 18 months since my post, and I'm still getting these alerts. The bug report obviously didn't help.

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clif_CROP

Inspiring

Oddly, I don't think I've seen this message for over a year. I'm running macOS 15.1 and macOS 15.2 on my machines, both with Photoshop 2025 v. 26.2.

In one of the messages last year someone posted this solution. At the time, I thought that would only be a temporary fix since the clipboard would just be filled again. I did do it and I don't know, maybe that cleared out some other crap stuck up in there so its worth a try. Below is the fix to try:

"Emptying the clipboard (Edit=>Purge=>Clipboard) worked for me."

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H Chinaski

Inspiring

Hi, thanks, I have tried that but it didn't have any lasting effect for me.

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Siansonea

Participating Frequently

I've been getting this message off and on over the years myself, and I'm not shocked to see that it hasn't been addressed. They'll throw every marketing and development resource at trying to get that generative AI microtransaction gravy train going, but stability and quality of life issues in Adobe applications? Not so much.

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Larry29731486lwom

Known Participant

Just started getting this bug myself. It never happened before, but after upgrading to PS2024 a week or two ago I've been getting the random error message while working in other programs every few days. Full Disc Access is enabled.

Photoshop 25.3.1

Ventura 13.6.3

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jfushtey

Known Participant

Same issue here. Photoshop is not the active software I'm using, nothing opened in Photoshop and still get the message randomly.

Mac OS Monterey

Photoshop 24.7.0

Any fixes out there?

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heyusa

Participant

This is a bug that I've been getting for years now. I'm always baffled how Adobe prioritizes bugs and features. Infusing neat AI functionalities, but lacking UX / bugs and simple user friendly learnings that would make our work actually better and faster.

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