"Invalid Annotation Object" error

This problem is documented all the way back to Acrobat 9 and maybe earlier. Acrobat 9 was released in 2008. That's 16 years ago. Is Adobe so proud of their product that they don't see a need to fix the recovery function? In my number of years of experience using various adobe programs, it has never once worked. May as well completely remove any form of document recovery. That might even make the software more stable. Adobe must mean Gong Show when translated to english. I guess Adobe is dead anyways, considering updates over the years haven't been bring much along the lines of improvements.

What worked for me was File > Restore because I had the autosave function enabled. Lost minimal notes and bookmarks made on th file.

Hope this works 🙂

Here's a quick fix that let me see the document with all the annotations that were causing Acrobat 9 Pro to report the "Invalid annotation object" error.

1. Close the document and Acrobat 9 Pro.
2. Open the Chrome Browser (download if you don't have it installed)
3. In Chrome:
   1. Open the PDF document (e.g. Bad_Doc.pdf) that's giving you problems.
      1. It opens PDFs using a viewer that isn't from Adobe, and doesn't seem to hiccup over "invalid annotation objects", so ...
      2. You should be able to view all the annotations including the "invalid" ones!
   2. Print the document using the Adobe PDF printer.
   3. Save the printed version with a different filename (e.g. Good_Doc.pdf) than the error-causing one.
4. Open the printed version (e.g. Good_Doc.pdf) with Acrobat 9 Pro

I´ve never listened about this problem, but today this problem appeared on my computer, and i did this:

first, i tried to save into another document and i tried to modify the comments, but the solutions is easy, just click ok the message"Invalid Annotation Object OK" until this msgbox disappears, after this click on EXPORT and choose the option JPEG format, save your document and print it. That´s all.

PS: Just wanted to print my document, no modify it i hope this information could be good for you.

Excuse my english im still learning.

If I have what you're trying to do correctly, you're trying to prevent losing the comments from a document that is corrupted/is giving you an error.

What I did, and worked successfully was, extract the comments from the 'currupt' document then import them into a working version of that document (maybe an earlier version). I don't know if this matters, but I'm currently running Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.

How I did this:

From the program's tool bar at the top I selected Comments > Export Comments to Data File... > and saved to my desktop (or wherever you want). I then opened a working version of the document (doesn't matter if the pages matched up perfectly as the program figured it out) and imported them the same way. From the toolbar I selected Comments > Import Comments... and that's all there was to it.

Hope this helps some folks out.

Ok folks, here's my go at it.  I had to delete the following to stop those stupid errors from randomly (or not so randomly popping up)

c:\documents and settings\<user>\application data\adobe\*.*

c:\documents and settings\<user>\apps\adobe\*.*

Make necessary adjustment for Windows Vista/7. 

I found that the annotations store something in the cache section in the user's area that causes this corruption.  I had no problem with the files when my users did.  I thought it was a rights issue at first, but after creating a new user and finding the problem went away, I figured it had to be in the user profile section.  Killing off these pieces fixed the issue for me.

I can't believe that this issue has been a problem for over 3 years and Adobe still doesn't resolve it.  Get on the ball Adobe.

-Jim Ponder

DLMoshak has a good solution for Mac users. Another option if you don't have a Mac, and if you do have access to the orginal unannotated file, is to open the original and use the Import Comments function. This will bring in all of the comments except for the "invalid" ones and the new file will be fine. The only problem, of course, is that you lose the offending annotation, but at least you can save all of the others.

Again, very annoying numerous pop-up "Invalid Annotation Object" errors. Try all steps above, reinstall Acrobat and the problem still exist. Wasting too much time on troubleshooting the unsolved problems.

Agree with qzmufu & Larss1, the problem was not solved for years.

Problem solved by using PDF-XChange Viewer, and may decide to purchase PDF-XChange Pro.

P.s. I was an Adobe supporter and never use any other 3rd parties PDF software before. But now, with all these disappointment had lead me to other PDF software which is less error, more reliable and not so costly as well.

I have the same problem. As others discribe It seems to happen on scanned and OCR-runned files, in pages with line/arrow/typewriter annotation tools.

Both Pro and reader crashes. SumatraPDF can open the files but without annotations. I downloaded PDF-XChange Viewer, this thing can open the file with the annotations and I can save the file i have not tried to fix it so that can open it in Acrobat again.

I just cant belive this problem has not been fixed, its been around for years. Adobe blaims other software, but thats just bull. Apperently it can fixed from their side anyways. I've lost days and days on this bug.

1. Identify the pages with invalid annotation objects

2. Make a copy of the document

3. a) Delete the pages with invalid annotaiton objects from the original

3. b) Use "Examine Document" to remove all annotations from the copy

4. Copy the deleted pages back from the cleaned-up copy to the original

this way you won't lose all your annotations.

@ Adobe: Aren't you ever going to fix that issue? Seriously! Having such a major bug in your software for years tells stories about your products' quality!