"The document could not be saved: a file error has occurred"

[brookesy310]

Upon trying to save an extensively annotated PDF in Acrobat Reader DC (latest release), I received the above error message. I tried to save as, both to replace the existing file, then in another location, to receive the same message. By now, the text had vanished from the visible document and only the underlining and comments were visible. I've basically had to re-type all the comments separately in Word, and will now have to correlate the PDF page numbers to the documents page numbers etc etc, an extremely frustrating end to hours of work.

My question is: why has this happened and, given that this has happened on several occasions in the past (but on less important PDFs), how do I prevent it from happening again? I've since reopened the PDF, commented and saved, and it works fine, so this is clearly a sporadic and random bug. Several others seem to have had this happen on the forum but I haven't found a satisfactory fix (or it seems even a proper understanding of the problem) from Adobe. There are no security controls on my PDF. I am running OS X 10.13.3.

Thanks.

[Document Geek]

I have experienced the same problem. But instead of retyping all the comments, simply export the comments as an FDF file. Then close the file without saving. Then reopen it and import your comments.

I wrote about FDFs in depth here: https://creativepro.com/working-with-fdfs-forms-data-files/

[brookesy310]

I wish I’d known about this before- thanks a lot! Great to have a workaround, now for Adobe to up their game..

[Document Geek · Accepted solution]

Please vote for this feature in the Acrobat User Voice forums: Recovery of all Open PDF documents after a crash or shutdown on the computer – Share your feedback o...

That, as well as tons of other great ideas posted there by users, are always being reviewed by the Acrobat team. Take some time and make your voice known.

[wtotheb]

Thank you so much for your post! You just saved me a day's work, which I can't believe I almost lost. It's so rare to edit a pdf that I've been spoiled by autosave everywhere else. Lesson learned!

Huge thx 

[Roni21872628hd2x]

None of these solution options are helping my A file 1/0 error has occurred when trying to perform a save as in PDF on a fillable form. I have plenty of storage and I am using a MacBook Pro.