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nick290164829h15
New Participant
March 22, 2023
Answered

An incorrect structure was found in the PDF file Error

  • March 22, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 10116 views

I have a colleague that has Adobe Acrobat 2020. He has a PDF open with many pages in it. He is trying to drag and drop some pages from that file to a folder in file explorer. Some of the pages drop eprfectly fine. Other pages will give the "an incorrect structure was found" error. Anybody know of a fix for this??

 

Thanks!

Correct answer Garrett35040043v4ux

Hey there Nick. I've found that sometimes the accessibility tags are kind of wonky (those are there for use with a screen-reader). If it's an acceptable solution for you and your colleague, I've found that deleting these tags in the file eliminates that error 100%, at least in my case.

To pin "Tags" to your navigation pane, go to:

View>Show/Hide>Navigation Panes, then click on "Accessibility Tags"

 

There will now be a tag icon in your left navigation pane (if it wasn't already there). Now, whenever you or your friend are having that error, simply click the tag and then right click the upper most tag in the tree (with the PDF icon) and click 'Delete tag'.

 

I don't know if this is a fix-all, but it's worked perfectly for me! I have that error all the time and it drives me nuts so I know the feeling.

 

Hope this helps!!

2 replies

G
Garrett35040043v4uxCorrect answer
New Participant
January 26, 2024

Hey there Nick. I've found that sometimes the accessibility tags are kind of wonky (those are there for use with a screen-reader). If it's an acceptable solution for you and your colleague, I've found that deleting these tags in the file eliminates that error 100%, at least in my case.

To pin "Tags" to your navigation pane, go to:

View>Show/Hide>Navigation Panes, then click on "Accessibility Tags"

 

There will now be a tag icon in your left navigation pane (if it wasn't already there). Now, whenever you or your friend are having that error, simply click the tag and then right click the upper most tag in the tree (with the PDF icon) and click 'Delete tag'.

 

I don't know if this is a fix-all, but it's worked perfectly for me! I have that error all the time and it drives me nuts so I know the feeling.

 

Hope this helps!!

    S
    Sonja24541374oeq7
    New Participant
    February 7, 2024

    Oh my gosh, this was soooooo helpful! Thank you, Garrett!!!  I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with some of the files I am editing.  This little trick worked like a charm. Now I'm going back and making sure the tags are deleted from everything. Glad I checked back to see if there had been any updates on this issue.

    Karl Heinz Kremer
    Karl Heinz Kremer
    Adobe Expert
    March 23, 2023

    This is an indication of a problem with the intenral structure of the PDF file. There is no fix. Try to find out where the damages files came from, and see if they are from the same source, or the same application that created them and then complain to the creator of the files or the tool used to create them. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can use a preflight profile to list PDF syntax errors. This may help to figure out exactly what's wrong, but does require to be familar with the PDF specification. 

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