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Participant
November 18, 2025
Question

PDF/A document: "The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (23)."

  • November 18, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 162 views

Hello,
I have a PDF document that opens successfully in Adobe Acrobat Pro, but it cannot be saved (“Save As”). An error appears: “The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (23).”

 

Upon examining the document, I found that the issue is caused by the /Info dictionary in the document’s trailer: <</Size 24 /Root 2 0 R /ID [<fcef49423a113ad480365f5897b86db8> <fcef49423a113ad480365f5897b86db8>]
/Info <</Title (Title) /Author (Author) /Subject (Description)>> >>

If this dictionary is removed, the document can be saved without any problem.

I looked into this further and found a note on the PDF Association website—Technical Note 0003: Metadata in PDF/A-1—which states that this dictionary is allowed if the information matches the XMP-encoded metadata. In this case, it does match.

On the other hand, the PDF file successfully passes the veraPDF verification for this compliance level:

I am attaching both the problematic document and the version with the /Info dictionary removed for debugging purposes.

1 reply

MikelKlink
Participating Frequently
November 18, 2025

The way the Info dictionary is embedded in your trailer is incorrect. According to spec it shall be embedded as an indirect reference to a dictionary:

 (ISO 32000-2 Table 15 — Entries in the file trailer dictionary)

But in your case it is embedded as a direct oobject.