Issue Opening Digitally Signed PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Reader

Question

We encountered an issue with Adobe Acrobat Reader when opening certain digitally signed PDF documents.

The problem occurs with files signed using Euronavate and Intesa certificates:

When the document contains only one page, Acrobat displays a blank page instead of the content.
The same file opens correctly in other viewers such as Foxit Reader and Chrome PDF Viewer.
Interestingly, documents signed only once do not exhibit this behavior.

Technical analysis shows that the affected PDFs share these characteristics:

PDF version: 1.4
Form type: AcroForm
No JavaScript, no encryption
Modified using iTextSharp after initial creation with Print2000 PDF Creator
Additional embedded fonts appear after signing. For example, Helvetica is introduced by the Intesa signature (both when Intesa is the only signer and when it is the second signature).

We have not found any issues with the signing process itself — the problem occurs only in Adobe Acrobat Reader, while other PDF viewers display the document correctly.

Has anyone experienced similar issues or found a workaround?
Feel free to share your insights!

MikelKlink · Answer

@rohan_5515 ,other developers have reported similar bugs in Acrobat when handling multi-signature PDFs with incremental updates, fonts, and AcroForms. While of course it's a nuisance seeing that Acrobat fails handling PDFs that other PDF viewers handle in the expected way, in my experience that usually is caused by errors in the PDF files in question that the other PDF viewers repair without informing the user. And in case of signature use cases you can never know whether the other PDF viewers' repairs are re-creating the originally signed appearance or something with deviations. Thus, I'd not call that "bugs" in Acrobat.

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