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Participant
March 22, 2023
Answered

An incorrect structure was found in the PDF file Error

  • March 22, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 10186 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

Garrett35040043v4uxCorrect answer
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!!

Participant
December 3, 2024

Hey folks, tags are essential for 508 remediation. Deleting tags means that people with disabilities cannot read the whole document through a screen reader. FYI

Karl Heinz  Kremer
Community Expert
Community 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.