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viveredesign
Known Participant
May 6, 2009
Question

Clients get corrupted PDF documents (containing forms) in emails?

  • May 6, 2009
  • 5 replies
  • 69440 views

Hello,

This isn't an Adobe issue per se, but many Adobe users have probably come across this IT issue:

When you drag certain kinds of PDF files to Outlook as attachments to send to a client or others, they often cannot open the PDF files because they're corrupted." This happened only with a PDF FORM that we produced, but non-form PDF files seemed to work fine.

After some testing, I found that it occurs when people are downloading the attachments from an online mail interface (e.g., gmail, yahoo mail, etc.)-- if they are using Outlook, the form-PDF's come across fine. If I enclose the form-PDF files in a zip file, then they come out fine too (in all cases).

So, is there a "magic" way to set-up Outlook so that the raw form-PDF attachments don't become corrupted when the client's try to download them?

thanks!

JP

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      5 replies

      J
      JudsonJones
      Participant
      October 20, 2011

      This is definitely on the side of Adobe/Microsoft. I sent the pdfs for Gmail and they were able to be downloaded and viewed fine. It was only when sending it from Outlook that the files couldn't be opened. I realize these posts were from a couple of years ago. Has anyone made any headway?

      B
      Bill12
      Inspiring
      October 21, 2011

      As you have said, it is an issue with Outlook. Outlook (and many other clients) look at a file and try to determine if it is binary or ascii. If the latter they just send it straight. If binary they encode so that the 8-bit nature is retained. The first 10-20 characters of a PDF are pure ascii and this is where the problem crops up. You need to see if you can force encoding and not just let Outlook make the decision. I think there is such a choice in the setup.

      Of course the other choice is to stay away from MS mail clients that are typically the problem clients. In fact, for a while I recall folks were saying that Outlook was treating a PDF as a virus and deleting it.

      J
      JudsonJones
      Participant
      October 21, 2011

      Thanks Bill for the response. There seem to be many encoding options but I'm sure which one to choose. I've tried a couple and none of them seem to work. There's "User define", "US-ASCII", "Unicode" "Western Eurpoean ISO" "Western European Windows" and about three dozen more. Any thoughts? I feel like I should also say that this is a fairly recent problem. I've never encountered this issue until about a week ago and all of a sudden all the pdfs I sent out couldn't be opened by folks. Thanks ahead of time for any help.

      B
      Bill12
      Inspiring
      May 7, 2009

      Sometimes the problem happens with the sending client. The client does not always recognize that the PDF is a binary file and does not properly encode it as an 8-bit file, but treats it as a 7-bit file, thus the corruption. Be sure that you have the client encode the file in a MIME format. See if that will do the job.

      S_D_A_
      S_D_A_
      Inspiring
      May 6, 2009

      It might be a combination of things, but basically as others have suggested putting the PDF file in an archive solves most of 'em. It's a burden though because some Suzie secretaries don't know how to decompress these files (there are still some OSes that don't have built in Zip decompression or it has been removed for  security reasons). Acrobat PDFs have made a rather notrious name for themselves to as carrying javascript exploits. I hope it doesn't get to the polnt where most corporate IT departments forbid the receptions of any outside PDFs. There are rumblings out there now ...


      It used to be quite the pain when I had to send out resumes via PDF.

      ~graffiti
      ~graffiti
      Legend
      May 6, 2009

      S.D.A. wrote:

      I hope it doesn't get to the polnt where most corporate IT departments forbid the receptions of any outside PDFs. There are rumblings out there now ...



      Ours already blocks Zip files in emails. That's why, when folks want to send me anything (especialy a PDF), I suggest posting it somewhere I can go and download it.

      Stix_Hart
      Stix_Hart
      Inspiring
      May 6, 2009

      Hello

      This is not exactly the same but we had a similar problem where some customers were unable to read PDFs we emailed them (any type) and we found out eventually it was our firewall.  It was scanning them and causing packet loss (basically little bits of data falling off) and combined with some of our clients email clients they became too corrupted to read.  Another interesting point is that it was mostly a problem with larger corporate customers and government departments, which tend to have more stringent security.

      The only help I can offer is that you have to keep experimenting and be broad minded about what may cause it, the first thing you could try is sending them from a PC with a different configuration (OS, security suite etc) and see what happens.

      ~graffiti
      ~graffiti
      Legend
      May 6, 2009

      It's generally on their end and not something to do with Outlook.

      Some email providors (especially web email) encode the PDF's for a faster transfer but when they are received, they aren't recognized as a PDF so they get corrupted. Not sure why this would happen specifically with forms.

      The recommended way to send PDF's is to Zip them (as you have found) first or post them to a web space and email the link for them to download the files.

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