Adobe Acrobat could not open because it is not a supported file type or because...

Report · Jun 29, 2022

Recently we've been receiving Pdfs that we're unable to open them in Acrobat, either DC or Reader with the error message above. Nor am I able to open the same Pdf in Chrome or Edge.

HOWEVER, I am able to open the Pdf in eCopy Pdf Pro and in Firefox without issue. I've applied this registry fix Resolve damaged document error when opening PDF files (adobe.com) but that didn't help.

I assume it's something in the header that causing this issue but I'm unable to find anything else on the web so I'm at a loss of how to fix. I read through some of the other posts and the fixes offered don't help.

I'm on Win10 enterprise v. 10.0.19042 build 19042 the latest version Acrobat DC.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

When Acrobat tells you that a file is corrupt, there is a pretty good chance that the file is actually corrupt. Just because other applications seem to open the document does not proof that the file is good. All these other PDF viewers only support a subset of the PDF features that Acrobat supports, so they may not even know that they are dealing with a corrupt file. A PDF file does not have a "header" like other formats, it's a pretty complex format, and unless you know how to parse a PDF file, looking at the data in the file would not get you far. As long as you can open other PDF fiels from other soruces, talk to the author of these files and find out how they are creating them. There is a pretty good chance that whatever they use is putting out bad PDF files.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

Can you share a file?

If not, please open a problem file in Notepad, and copy and paste the first TEN LINES into a reply. This isn't a header, but sometimes there is some clue there.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

Unfortunately, I'm unable to share the file, however here are the first 22 lines from Textpad.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

This is definitely not a valid PDF file. This is what just a random PDF file that I opened looks like:

%PDF-1.6

%âãÏÓ
577 0 obj

<</Filter/FlateDecode/First 6/Length 153/N 1/Type/ObjStm>>stream

So again, talk to the author or creator of the file and tell them they are not createing valid PDF files.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

Hmm. This is interesting. It has some parts of PDF. But it also has some stuff that isn't a PDF. I think it's what is called an RTFD file, made using a Mac. They are actually a bundle of files, so there is a PDF in there. You may need to talk to the person sending you this stuff. Because another Mac will just unravel it, they may not even know.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

We also determined they were created from an Apple device and was researching to see if this was a know issue and if there's a fix since the files can be opened in Firefox and eCopy pdf pro. We thought these files might be created or emailed from an iPhone, so I tried different ways to create and send from my iPhone and couldn't replicate the Pdf error.

Report · Jun 30, 2022

Another head scratcher... even DocuSign is able to import, read and open that Pdf (rtfd) file without issue.