How to find cause of 110 error

[SuperBK1]

My application is creating PDF files. it first creates two or more PDF documents and then combines those together.  When my PDF are modified by the application by adding stamping and then combined, Acrobat gets an error when I open the document.  The exact error is
There was an error processing a page. There was  a problem reading this document (110).
The error occurs on pages where I have added stamping.

The PDF can be viewed with Chrome.

This doesn't happen unless I combine documents. If I open a single document, its good. The error does not occurr unless multiple PDFs are combined.  

My question is How can I use the PDF tools (or some other to find out whats wrong. Is it the stamping or is it the combining? 

I installed the trial of Adobe and attempted to open with Preflight, but Adobe sometimes crashes when I try to analyze it. 

I tried some online analyzers. One shows me this:
24 0 obj

╰─ 23 0

PDFInvalidObject(167 bytes)

Another analizer tells me:
PDF Syntax error : Invalid dictionary construct: [/View, {'ViewState': /ON}, /Print, {'PrintState': /ON}, /Page, Element, {'Subtype': /FG}]

Any ideas?
Thanks

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Is the name of the software top-secret?

I suspect the built-in Chrome PDF viewer is less "fussy" as to how the file is put together. What about other viewers and browsers?

Can you upload a non-top-secret PDF that demonstrates the problem, along with the PDFs that were combined to create it?

[AnandSri]

Hello @SuperBK1!

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out.

Could you please share the name of the application through which you are generating the PDFs? The error you're seeing — “There was a problem reading this document (110)” — typically indicates a corrupted structure in the PDF file. If single files are fine and merged files break, merging code is likely the issue.. Use Adobe Acrobat's Preflight tool to analyse and fix PDF errors. Navigate to All Tools > Print Production > Preflight. See this article for detailed information: Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool (Adobe Acrobat Pro)

For testing purposes only, Disable Enhanced Security:  Go to Menu > Preferences > Security (Enhanced) and uncheck "Enable Protected Mode at startup" and "Enable Enhanced Security". Click OK, restart the Acrobat app, and check. Please enable the security settings after the test.

Are you on a Mac or Windows machine, and what is the version? 

If using a PDF library (e.g., iText, PDFBox, PDFLib), make sure you close and flush all file streams properly before combining. Avoid manually editing low-level PDF objects unless you're confident in their structure. Use Adobe's PDF Tools API to combine the PDFs. 

If the issue still persists, please share the affected PDF, and the PDFs which were combined.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[SuperBK1]

Preflight crashes Acrobat for me. I sent an error report though the app.  I will have to work on getting some non proprietary documents in this error condition. 

[AnandSri]

Hello!

Thank you for sharing the details. Does the app crash only while using the Preflight tool? Or in other situations as well? Please ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed on the machine: 25.001.20458 Planned update, Apr 15, 2025. Check for any pending updates from the Menu > help > check for updates, install the updates, restart the app and the machine.

If the app still crashes with the latest build, collect the logs and share them with us here, or share the log ID for further investigation. 

Try with another set of PDFs, and let us know if you still get the error 110.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[SuperBK1]

Where are the logs? Is there a setting to enable them? I did submit an
error report through the app when Acrobat catches the error and presents
the error reporting form.

Acrobat crashes mostly in preflight. In normal view, it just shows "Error
reading document (110).

I changed to another library (Aspose) for combining PDFs and that resolved
my issue. I'm going to go with that. I'll continue to investigate this
issue as time allows.

[AnandSri]

You can download the log collector tool, run it to reproduce the issue, stop the tool, save the logs, and share the log ID or files with us. Since you mentioned that you switched libraries to combine the PDFs and are no longer receiving the error message, it seems the issue was with the previous library. Please share the logs with us for further investigation, and we will provide an update after analyzing them.

Thanks for your time and cooperation on this.

Anand Sri.