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S
Stevie5FC1
Participant
January 21, 2021
Answered

Older pdf files not opening and are distorted majorly

  • January 21, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1496 views

I'm trying to help my dad out selling some property and he has all these pdf's on a flashdrive. literally every one of them comes up garbled and distorted like below, as a blank white page or both readers are completely not able to read the file. I have tried both the web reader and acrobat and acrobat couldn't read any of them and the web reader could read some. The flashdrive is only a year old and has other files that are in perfect condition on it, but these files are from around 2011-2015 and should be maps, forms and blueprints. Anything would help, I'm a tech person and I have never seen anything like this.

 

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Dov Isaacs

The fact that opening them in a web browser that is not based on Adobe code yields garbage (while Acrobat yields an error message or a blank page) reinforces our belief that your PDF files are seriously corrupted. How they got corrupted, we cannot speculate about.

 

We assume that other PDF files on your system (i.e., those that aren't on that flash drive), open with no issues, correct?

 

Sorry, but there is not anything we can do to assist here.

 

2 replies

Dave__M
Community Expert
Dave__MCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 21, 2021

Are you opening these PDFs in Reader or Acrobat?  Your screenshot looks like it might be from a browser.  I would transfer them from Flash drive to the hard drive/desktop, and then open them in Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro DC.  Any other details you can provide might help further troubleshoot this.

My best,

Dave

S
Stevie5FC1Author
Participant
January 21, 2021

The files will only open in a web browser, keeps popping up as an error or a blank page in acrobat.

Dov Isaacs
Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
Legend
January 21, 2021

The fact that opening them in a web browser that is not based on Adobe code yields garbage (while Acrobat yields an error message or a blank page) reinforces our belief that your PDF files are seriously corrupted. How they got corrupted, we cannot speculate about.

 

We assume that other PDF files on your system (i.e., those that aren't on that flash drive), open with no issues, correct?

 

Sorry, but there is not anything we can do to assist here.

 

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
January 21, 2021

At Adobe, we haven't seen anything like that either! We have PDF files from Acrobat 1.0 that we have no issues in opening, viewing, and printing now.

 

Did you open the PDF files directly from the flash drive or did you copy them first to your system's disk? If trying to open directly from the flash drive, copy them first and let us know if that somehow resolves the problem.

 

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    S
    Stevie5FC1Author
    Participant
    January 21, 2021

    I copied them and tried to open them again, the same stuff is happening. Here's another screenshot though, my dad swears these were all intact.

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