Known Participant

Question

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

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 26, 2019
30 replies
21106 views

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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B

BaldockUK

Participant

Has anyone solved this problem? I am getting this random message about once a day for several weeks. I can be in another program (like Firefox) and PS intervenes with this message.

MacOS Mojave on a MacBook Pro. PS 21.2.0

Jon Hidden-Coley

Known Participant

Same here with all of our iMacs. Seems to have been going on a while now from looking through the thread with no response from Adobe.

Come on guys, you've already screwed up Illustrator, don't let it happen to Photoshop too.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

I think the solution lies outside Photoshop. I don't think Photoshop randomly decides to open files. Rather, something else is randomly ASKING it to open files. The trick is to find what or why.

My first two questions would be

1. is Photoshop the default app to open PDF files on this system?

2. does this only happen if Photoshop is already running, or does it equally cause Photoshop to be started (splash screen etc.)?

shyelaw79549580

Participant

I have the exact same issue and same security concerns as many others have mentioned.

MV.Elliman

Participant

Also adding myself to the list of people experiencing this problem.

MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.5

Photoshop Version is 21.1.3

Attempts (each resulting with no change to issue) -

-restart

-re-install PS (keeping old preferences)

-re-install PS (creating new preferences)

-clean install entirety of CC apps (creating new preferences)

None of these solutions worked. If anything, the last two methods were metaphorically painful because I had to go through and create workspace settings all over again for each app.

Can this issue be sent forward to the PS developers as a possible bug? Or do topics just linger in the community forums without the knowledge of developers?

L

lauragalora99

Inspiring

Same deal here. Been happening since I got my brand new MBP with Catalina and latest PS. Freaking me out from a security perspective. Adobe - please tell us what's going on here!

S

SouthernRust

Inspiring

I'm having the same issue. Photoshop non-active, but files open. Pops up with that error message. Strange that something is trigering an open document command.

thobgood

Known Participant

Has happened to me several times as well. Just happened again. I was actually typing in Chrome, and Photoshop suddenly threw itself into the foreground with the "this is not a valid Portable Document File (PDF) document. It cannot be opened" message. Very suspicious that Photoshop seems to be trying to open a PDF on its own. Is this a security error?

00rhodiad

Participating Frequently

Same red flag for me—security concern because this random error happens to me when Photoshop is NOT the active app. I haven't asked PS to do anything at all, certainly not asking it to open a PDF.

How about this: could it be related to clipboard handling? I know that at least on a Mac, the Adobe inter-app clipboard format is (or at least can be set to be) PDF. And this format conversion can happen as a background task, presumably. So one scenario could be that as I'm working away in another app, I've copied something that includes data that PS doesn't like for whatever reason, or thinks it should be able to convert to PDF but can't.

If assessing the contents of the clipboard IS a standard background task for PS, that would theoretically explain the startling behavior of PS jumping in front of my active app and declaring a phantom PDF to be invalid. If so, then perhaps Adobe should just supress the error until I try to paste into PS and not ... jump up in my face and freak me the heck out. 😉

D

Dsner5000

Participant

00rhodiad,

Thanks for posting your theory — I believe you are correct. I have Photoshop running in the background with no PS files open. About 5 minutes before I got this popup I unintentionally highlighted and copied (command/c) a web image in Firefox. I didn't copy or paste anything after this, so the web image is still sitting in my clipboard.

For reference, I'm running PS vs. 23.5.1 / Mac OS Big Sur 11.6.8 / iMac (2017) / Firefox vs. 104.0.2

G

grafx

Participating Frequently

Same issue... awaiting an update or some response from adobe.

D

Dandreti

Participating Frequently

Also having this problem - notably I'm having it with a completely new install on a new machine. (i.e. not carrying over any settings whatsoever.)

I have a suspicion it is related to Photoshop not correctly handling the temporary files it makes, as it seems to only occur when photoshop is otherwise idle.

T

torgny_hylen

Participant

I too have this issue.

Photoshop in the background... with a single png file open (a tiny screenshot of a single layer)... working in other apps (Sketch, Slack, Chrome), and randomly get the "This is not a valid Portable Document File (PDF) document. It cannot be opened." alert, with an "OK" to dismiss.

It has happened thrice, weeks apart of each with no discernible pattern.

Not a fan of apps trying to open things on their own... makes me security conscious/anxious.

macOS Catalina 10.15.4
21.1.2 Release of Photoshop
3,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel i5
24GB 2400 MHz DDR4

O

ogflanker

Participant

I have the same exact issue.

Sahil.Chawla

Adobe Employee

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about the PDF error, could you please try resetting the preferences of Photoshop and let us know if it helps?

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Regards,
Sahil

J

jencreatesAuthor

Known Participant

Meant to answer you a LONG time ago and never did! I've tried removing preferences and have cleared all my caches. Even had an upgrade to photoshop in there. Nothing seems to work. Still happens randomly without anything specific happing to preclude it.

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