"The operation failed because Adobe Acrobat encountered an unknown error" only of first try

[ionel_5501]

When I try to draw using Fill & Sign, I get the "The operation failed because Adobe Acrobat encountered an unknown error" error only when I click on the PDF for the first time. If I close the error and try again, I can draw (as seen in the video). Some PDFs don't work at all.

What is the exact problem with the PDF (attached)? We are trying to debug this, see what's the exact problem and fix it. Some of our clients have errors with PDFs and we don't know where to look for the exact problem.

Please don't suggest rebooting, reinstalling and other unseless fixes. Some PDFs work with no issue. It's not an OS or Acrobat version problem. It's the PDF. Optimizing the PDF also doesn't work. I tried CLI tools like "qpdf" to fix it with no success. I want to see the exact error in logs and why it doesn't like this PDF. 

[ionel_5501]

I used the QPDF CLI tool to fix the PDF and nothing worked:
$ qpdf --repair-input damaged.pdf fixed.pdf

$ qpdf --linearize damaged.pdf fixed.pdf
$ qpdf --recompress-flate damaged.pdf fixed.pdf
$ qpdf --decrypt damaged.pdf fixed.pdf

Even their check method doesn't show anything wrong with the PDF: qpdf --check damaged.pdf

What kind of PDF analysis tools are out there? Using a text editor shows the binary of the PDF. Even if I see the internal readable code of the PDF, I don't know how to fix it. I need a tool that can find the issue and also fix it.

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi ionel_5501,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry about the trouble caused.

Please allow us some time to check the document you shared.

In the meantime, please let us know if this issue occurs only with this particular document or with others. Did you create the PDF or receive it to fill out? 

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[ionel_5501]

hi @Meenakshi Negi 

We are generating the PDF by filling the PDF attached in this message. We are using a PDF filling library to fill it programatically. We don't have issues with some other PDFs filled by this library. Only this one specific PDF has issues. 

We  got the PDF attached below from online somewhere, as we did with all of our PDFs. We updated some fields to align it with our needs and that's it. It was the same process with all of our PDFs. But again, this PDF is the only one that has issues.  (the one in the original message. The one attached here is the unfilled version of the same PDF)