Participating Frequently

Question

Unable to make PDF-A complaint PDF using Preflight

Forum|Forum|8 days ago
September 10, 2026
40 replies
193 views

I keep trying to use the preflight to make my PDF compliant with the PDF A standards.

It keeps giving me the error message saying thedocument contains an embedded file entry.

I tried sanitizing the document which did not work.

C

Colorful_uniqueness3376

Participant

Every document I have is giving the same embedded file error! This needs to be fixed!

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Contact Adobe directly.

Get the license holder to call Adobe, our solution was that they rolled back our version. We were told they’re not going to fix the bug until the next release in October. Believe me, we went 6 days trying to discover this with the support people. It works now, but there is a bit of a process to roll back. Good luck my friend!

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Is there an update? So you are aware, my day ends at 3:30pm EST.

Amal Jaiswal

Community Manager

Hi there,
Sorry to keep you waiting, we have logged the ticket with our development team to further investigate this issue. We will keep you posted on the updates.

Thanks for your understanding
~Amal

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Would it be prudent for now to revert to the previous version of Acrobat? Or should I wait? Is there a ticket number we can refer to? My boss is requesting it.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

We have lost access to our Adobe professional pdf maker. What is going on?

Lynne

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

I can still access pdf maker, but still same issue. One of my coworkers lost access completely.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

never mind that, she got it back now.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

I copied it at the suggestion of a coworker to google drive. Please confirm you can access it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16OsHhIDuoJn0w7lMwYAlU2JqiuwoGw4f/view?usp=drive_link

Amal Jaiswal

Community Manager

Hi there, I am not able to access it as it's asking for permissions. Please retry to share the file without permissions so we can access it easily.

~Amal

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

I gave you permission last night. I got the message through g-mail. Hopefully you can access it now.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Amal, I tried uploading a video, but it's too large. I tried sending to my work and it won't take it nor will uploading it directly to you from my phone. It is 226mb.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

It is starting to get critical here. WE need our preflight working. We are thinking here that it is an Adobe issue, not our docs. I created a clean sample for you. Please see below.

sample doc1.pdf

sample doc2.pdf

sample doc-original.docx

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Original is the word,
Sample 1 is the pdf made from the sample original
Sample 2 is the opened and preflight document from Sample 1, which failed.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

A co-worker with the same issue, contacted Chat GPT with the question.
This was the response:

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Amal, this is getting very long to fix this issue. I honestly think this issue is on your end of things. I tried making a pdf from a word document, with 1 sentence on the page. I pdf'd it, it pdf'd fine. Then I opened the pdf in Adobe and tried to pre-flight it. I'm getting the same issue, so it's not a document issue. We are now checking that everyone here at my company are having the same issue. We do believe it's an Adobe issue, not our company. We all had the same issue before the upgrade and now with the new account upgrade it's back.

It is becoming critical to operations here. We can't complete our tasks without it to the customers. I can't send you one of our documents as it's classified but I can send you that sample document I made. The one marked original is the word doc, Sample doc1 is the pdf from the word doc and Sample doc2 is the preflighted document.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for responding. We use word to convert to pdf. It converts perfectly fine. It is only once we work on the pdf like bookmarks, fixing links and regular QA then try to preflight it that we have this issue.

I converted a totally different document and I get the same things (fyi, we are all having this same issue - there are 4 of us).

Here is the preflight report.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

I’m still waiting. What’s going on?

Amal Jaiswal

Community Manager

Hi @responsible_realityaaa0

I hope you are doing well, and I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you and for the frustration this has caused. Thanks for your patience.

A few useful updates from your last messages: since you've confirmed there are no attachments in the Attachments panel now, the original "embedded file entry" cause looks ruled out. And on the account history, thanks for confirming it's always been Acrobat Pro, just a new account set up when ownership moved from your previous IT contact to the owner. That's a helpful data point, since a newly created account could be on a different plan or license configuration than the old one, even if it's nominally "Pro," so it's worth double-checking Account > Plan details on the new account against what the old one had, in case something like a Preflight or PDF/A-specific entitlement differs.

The more pressing issue right now is the rasterizing (your PDF turning into a graphic during PDF/A conversion, with poor quality when brought back to text via OCR). That's a separate problem from the embedded file error, so it would help to confirm:

What is the exact error or warning message Preflight gives you now (a screenshot would help, since "embedded file entry" no longer seems to be it)?

How was this PDF originally created (exported from Word/InDesign, scanned, printed to PDF from another app)?

Are the fonts embedded in the source file? You can check under File > Properties > Fonts.

Does this happen with every PDF you try to convert, or just this specific one?

Rather than OCR'ing the rasterized output, it would be better to go back to the original source file and re-run the PDF/A-1b or PDF/A-2b conversion once we can see why it's rasterizing in the first place.

We're still working through this with you. Thanks for your patience and cooperation.

Regards,
Amal

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

Our fonts are embedded. My boss (the owner) got back to me, he confirmed it is Pro as was our previous versions. All our pdfs are not converting properly.

R

responsible_realityaaa0Author

Participating Frequently

I've been playing around this morning. I logged out of Adobe Acrobat and rebooted then signed back in (I even tried, logging out, logging in and rebooting). It still won't make my document without an attachment, which I checked and there is no attachments. I did notice however, it turned my pdf into a graphic. I tried returning it to text but it's not good quality.

Lynne

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