Skip to main content
M
Mark_J_Miller
Participant
August 21, 2009
Question

Acrobat 9 Pro - Cannot delete pages

  • August 21, 2009
  • 10 replies
  • 36206 views

I have a pdf created from a Word 2007 document that has blank "place holder" pages in it.  I want to delete the "place holder" pages, but I keep getting the following error message "One or more pages are in use and could not be deleted."  Why do I keep getting that?  I never had this issue in Acrobat 8.

I have tried creating the pdf in Acrobat, I have used the Acrobat tab in Word, I have right-clicked on the file in explorer and selected Convert to PDF.  The method of conversion/creation has no bearing on the problem.  I have made sure that under the conversion preferences in Word the Create PDF/A option is unchecked.  I cannot find that option in Acrobat Preferences.  I have also tried changing the view mode for PDF/A documents to "Never" under the Acrobat Preferences.  Nothing seems to work.

In a perhaps related note, I cannot save the document after inserting pages.  The save button and File menu save are grayed out.  I have to use the save as.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    10 replies

    D
    Dr__Pamela_Rutledge
    Participant
    September 13, 2011

    I am using Adobe X 10.1.0 on a MacBook Pro with OS 10.6 (I have not upgraded to Lion because too many programs I use are not yet compatible) and continually having the "cannot delete pages" problem.  It doesn't matter how I go about trying to delete (i.e. Keyboard, menu, trashcan, etc.); they all return the same error command.  Sometimes restarting the app works, but not always.  Very frustrating since I use acrobat all day long.

    P
    plugsnpixels
    Participant
    July 31, 2011

    Let's say you have a Mac and therefore cannot and do not use the toolbar and are using Acrobat Pro 10.1 and are STILL having the page in use/deletion problem? Then what?

    As with another poster I found you have to keep quitting ansd relaunching Acrobat to continue delating pages which is ridiculuous.

    This is happening continually now; it wasn't this bad before. So maybe a recent system update is responsibile?

    M
    Mark_J_MillerAuthor
    Participant
    January 18, 2011

    Sorry, I forgot to post my solution.  It was indeed the TerraGo Toolbar, as some suggested, that was causing the issue.  Once that was uninstalled everything worked normally.  I reported the issue to TerraGo (maybe the bug report number that one user gave) and they said it would be fixed.  I have not tried installing the toolbar again, so I have no idea if it was ever fixed.

    Good luck with your troubleshooting.

    Mark

    A
    Anonymous
    January 18, 2011

    It was indeed the TerraGo Toolbar.  I have reinstalled the toolbar (latest version) and the problem did not return.

    J
    johnlutes
    Participant
    January 15, 2011

    I have read the question, I have the same problem.... where is the answer?

    R
    Rene-P
    Participant
    January 15, 2011

    Several persons have reported this problem inlcuding me. The way I solved

    it was following the suggestion posted in this tread. I unistalled the

    TerraGo Toolbar and the problem was gone. Good luck.

    A
    Anonymous
    October 12, 2010

    I had the same problem, also had the Terra toolbar.  The version of the toolbar I had while I had the problem was 5.0.  Upgraded to 5.6 and the problem is gone, for now at least.  I would suggest that tact first.

    F
    Funnyvoyage
    Participating Frequently
    October 10, 2009

    I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

    However, Acrobat is little complicated for me to operate. So when I need to do some simple modifying toward my PDF files,  I always convert PDF files to editable word format with AnyBizSoft PDF to Word Converter and edit them with MS Word. It supports encrypted files and preserves text, layouts, images and hyperlinks accurately.

    After you edit it, you can use an office add-on SaveAsPDF to save word as PDF format if necessary.

    You all can have a free trial and sincerely hope they can do you some favor.

    J
    Jim_3141
    Participant
    October 9, 2009

    I have had the same problem, but none of the solutions offered worked. I then remembered that the "delete page" worked before I installed an add-in called "TerraGo Toolbar". I just uninstalled it, reopened Acrobat and it works just fine now!

    J
    Jim_3141
    Participant
    October 9, 2009

    I sent an email to TerraGo Support and they sent the following response: "This has bug has been discovered and our development team is quickly creating a patch to resolve the problem. The patch should be available within a week or two (near the end of October, 2009). For your reference, the bug number assigned to this case is: 3620. Check back in about two weeks and hopefully the patch will be available. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience."

    A
    Anonymous
    September 18, 2009

    I've had a similar problem on a file with over 650 pages.  Ouch!!!.  It took about 15 hours, but I finally found a way around it.

    First, I selected all pages, and then I extracted all pages to a folder I set up on my desktop.  Make sure you create a folder for this first, or you may send hundreds of individual files to your desktop.  Make sure you select the box that says to save as individual files.  Do not select the box that says to delete files after you have extracted; you want to keep the original file as is. When this was done, I went to the new folder and found all of my pages there as individual .pdf files, except for the corrupt page.  This told me what page was causing the problem.

    I tried many times to take all of the good files and combine them into a single file, but that did not work, so don't waste your time.  I think perhaps I had too many of them.

    So the next thing I did was go back to my original document, I took the bad page, and I moved it to the end of my document.  Let's say it was now page number 653.

    I then went to the document tab and clicked on split.  I set the split to not allow more than 652 pages per split.  It then created two documents.  One with 652 good pages, and one with a single bad page.  I then deleted the .pdf with the single bad page.  Now all I have to do is to create a single new page for the one that was corrupt.

    A little tedius I know, but really not that bad.  I wish I had figured this out 15 hours sooner.

    Gary

    B
    Bill12
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2009

    In your list of methods, you did not indicate printing to the Adobe PDF printer. You might try that.

    I think the key is your side comment about PDF/A. Select a different job settings, like the press or print settings. As I recall, PDF/A files can not be edited as they are archive files (reason for the A). I am not sure I am correct on this, but making that change is worth a try.

    C
    ckwynne1
    Participant
    August 22, 2009

    I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The form was a Word document

    transformed to an AA9 form. Doesn't that automatically make it a pdf? What

    is PDF/A?

    You are correct a pdf file cannot be edited even if you have a full version

    of Acrobat.

    Cindy Wynne

    B
    Bill12
    Inspiring
    August 23, 2009

    Mark mentioned a PDF/A format which is an archive form of PDF and has some restrictions as a result. I do not know that much about it, but it may be that pages can not be deleted. If you open the PDF as a form in Designer, then you can no longer make changes on the form in Acrobat, which may be your case. You probably would not have a PDF/A document which requires the selection of the appropriate job settings. If don't know what I was talking about, you would most likely never have chosen that setting.

    For forms, be sure you are talking about Acroforms (created with the tools under the Acrobat TOOLS menu). If you go to the FORMS menu, you will most likely find yourself in Designer. In that case, you would have to delete the pages in Designer (as least I am pretty sure that is the case). If your problem deals more with forms, you may want to start a new topic and leave this one to the original question that seems to be different.

    C
    ckwynne1
    Participant
    August 21, 2009

    I'm new to Acrobat and had the same problem with 9 Pro.  What worked for me was to save the document, get out of it, reopen it and then delete the page and save again.  Seemed like a lot of steps, but it worked.  If anyone else has THE answer, I would love to see it too.

    ckwynne1

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices