Shared file from Acrobat is broken

[Roald5C66]

Hi, I am having problems sharing files from Acrobat. The files originate from a Ricoh scanner. They are not OCR'ed, just scanned without any indexing. They look fine in Acrobat, but when I share them to Adobe Documentcloud some of the pages (sometimes even all) look like static noise! The problem manifests itself on most scans either if they are of letters, images or anything else.

If I download and look at them in Acrobat they look fine. But, we are really using the sharing and commenting to as part of our workflow, so I cannot ask the users to download the files. 

I have asked Ricoh, but just met a really rude supportperson that said that my pdf worked fine in Foxit, so there was nothing wrong with their scanner. And that is part of the problem, the PDF works perfectly in Acrobat and other PDF readers, but on the web it is unreadable. Also we have another Ricoh of the same model that this does not happen to.

Example PDF (look at page 2 on the web, and then download it and look at it locally) : https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:ae18d700-79f7-4aa0-aeb5-6da862ec9fc5

Any tips? 

[ls_rbls · Accepted solution]

 This has nothing to do with the ability of different web browser to render a PDF, nor the scanning software of your Ricoh IM C4500 series that produced the PDf document from a scan.

As mentioned, the file opens perfectly fine in a web browser if  it is saved locally  in a computer. 

The same file won't open correctly or render appropriatley when it is opened via shared link to the Document Cloud.

That clown from Ricoh support doesn't know what he's talking about. This issue has no relation whatsoever with Foxit pdf reader or any PDf reader as far as this error is concerned

This needs to be addressed to the Adobe engineering team that handles the document cloud  service. It seems that some important coding is missing with the DC app launcher.

If you switch to developer mode in your web browser (F12 key), when you're trying to view the file that was shared using a link to the document cloud you'll be able to witness all the obvious errors that come up in the console:

The errors shown above happened in 5 different browser that I tested it with using the same Document Cloud shared link .

NOTE: I did noticed, however, that the Ricoh scanning software is producing PDFs with a very old PDF Maker version 1.4  (that is basically Acrobat 5) .

To be less prone to postscript profile embedding mismatching issues, it may be convenient to produce PDFs with  at  least PDF Maker version 1.6. That is just a personal note, I may be totally way off (or wrong) with this note, but nevertheless, it caught my attention.

[Bernd Alheit]

The document displays correct in Internet Explorer.

[Roald5C66]

Thanks for replying.

It also display correctly in my local Internet Explorer, but not in Chrome and Firefox. Also this is not the only document with problems and usually they do not work in IE. 

Unfortunately our users and their clients seem to mostly use Chrome.

EDIT: Try scrolling up and down in IE 5-6 times, and it might be showing the noise too..

[Bernd Alheit]

Chrome and Firefox uses own PDF viewers.

[gary_sc]

Hi Roald,

Yes, I'm seeing that "bad view" on Safari, Chrome, and Opera. I did not see it initially but as you said, scrolling does start it.

Can you please elaborate on your scanning process? That is, do you do this from within Acrobat or do you use the Rikoh scanner's software, or something else alltogether?

Oh, what version (and what release) of Acrobat are you using? And what is you OS (and what release)?

If you are using software other than Acrobat to do the scanning, how are you converting them to PDF?

As a trial, to save some "back-and-forth," can you please try to do some scanning using just the Rikoh scanning software and then convert them to PDF using Acrobat. What happens?

[Roald5C66]

Hi, and thanks for replying. 

The users scan to pdf on the Ricoh, and the Ricoh sends the PDF via mail to the user. The Ricoh is a MFP so Adobe does not have any direct contact with it. The file enclosed is entirely produced on the Ricoh.

They open it in Adobe and shares it directly, without editing. Some users have Adobe Pro, and some have only Adobe Reader. Since there is no problem showing it in PDF viewer programs, I am guessing there is only a problem in the built in viewer in Documentcloud. The OS is mostly Windows 10 and pretty much all updates available are added. 

I couldnt fint a forum for Documentcloud. Does anyone know if it is possible to report bugs in it somewhere?

I have also tested running the PDFs through NAPS2 to OCR, and after that they do work fine in Documentcloud, so I am guessing there is some parameter from the Ricoh that Documentcloud cant handle, while Adobe and other readers handles it.

[gary_sc]

Hi Roald,

I just tried an experiment and it seemed to have worked.

I opened the file you supplied and opened it in Acrobat Pro DC. I then saved it as an Optimized PDF. 

that was it.

I can now scroll up and down and down and up and the file doesn't get ugly. I have to leave this second but when I get back I hope you have the same success. Let me know.

[Roald5C66]

Hello Gary, and thanks for replying.

Yes, that seems to work. Unfortunately our users are not very advanced, and they will probably forget this every so often. Also many users only have Acrobat Reader, where there is no Optimization. 

There is no help to get from Ricoh, they just claim that since it works in Foxit, and our support person even said that he "even installed Acrobat Reader and it worked, so this is not our problem.".

And there is a point here, the PDF seems to work everywhere except in the documentcloud-viewer. In Chrome I can download it and open it in the inbuilt viewer and it works perfectly, but in documentcloud-viewer it is broken. 

So I think this boils down to the documentcloud-viewer being a bit broken. The problem is reaching anyone that can actually fix this? 

[gary_sc]

Hi Roald,

Here's the deal. I was running out the door yesterday and didn't have the time to elaborate then but I've recently learned that when Acrobat (I do not know if it's just Pro, Acrobat and even Reader) when a PDF is opened, if something is buggered in the PDF, Acrobat automatically fixes it if it can. This is done behind the scenes and unless you learn that it can be done, there's no way to know that it has been done.

When I saved your file as an Optimized PDF, I was not expecting any actual reduction in size (and it didn't), I just wanted to make sure that I was doing an actual save of the new document. 

This leads me to suspect that the problem is in fact the creation of the PDF via Ricoh. 

In 2008 Adobe released the PDF format to be an international standard (ISO). At that point, any company could create PDFs but not every company creates equal PDFs. Even the variety of PDF readers varies and the reader on a Mac, PC, and in every browser is not always up to snuff. It's very possible the the PDF being gerated by Ricoh has issues and that's being compounded by the readers in Browsers. By this last statement, I mean that there could be a glitch that would not show up unless the PDF is also being viewed by a browser with an issue. But without the two together, the glitch may not be seen. 

I do not know what else to tell you how to resolve your issue. It is not possible for Adobe to fix an issue that Ricoh is creating (if they are) or to fix an issue within a browser (if they are). But if Ricoh is creating problems with their PDF creation and if browsers are creating problems with their readers, there's not all that much that Adobe can do about it. Well, at least beyond having someone responsible for downloading all Ricoh files, resaving them in Acrobat, and then uploading them.

Sorry, I wish I could tell you more.

[ls_rbls · Accepted solution]

 This has nothing to do with the ability of different web browser to render a PDF, nor the scanning software of your Ricoh IM C4500 series that produced the PDf document from a scan.

As mentioned, the file opens perfectly fine in a web browser if  it is saved locally  in a computer. 

The same file won't open correctly or render appropriatley when it is opened via shared link to the Document Cloud.

That clown from Ricoh support doesn't know what he's talking about. This issue has no relation whatsoever with Foxit pdf reader or any PDf reader as far as this error is concerned

This needs to be addressed to the Adobe engineering team that handles the document cloud  service. It seems that some important coding is missing with the DC app launcher.

If you switch to developer mode in your web browser (F12 key), when you're trying to view the file that was shared using a link to the document cloud you'll be able to witness all the obvious errors that come up in the console:

The errors shown above happened in 5 different browser that I tested it with using the same Document Cloud shared link .

NOTE: I did noticed, however, that the Ricoh scanning software is producing PDFs with a very old PDF Maker version 1.4  (that is basically Acrobat 5) .

To be less prone to postscript profile embedding mismatching issues, it may be convenient to produce PDFs with  at  least PDF Maker version 1.6. That is just a personal note, I may be totally way off (or wrong) with this note, but nevertheless, it caught my attention.

[Roald5C66]

Thanks Gary, good points, but as  ls_rbls says, this is not the built-in pdf viewer in the browser, this is a viewer built in the webpage that is showing the pdf, and that seems to be broken. The PDF works perfectly in the built in Chrome PDF-viewer.

Thanks ls_rbls, I didnt think of the developer mode in the browser. Good catch. About 1.4, yes, we checked the Ricoh, but couldnt find any settings for that, however we changed from PDF to PDF/A without that doing any difference in documentcloud. 

Documentcloud is very practical and easy, its really easy for users to share documents, and they dont need to worry about filesizes in mail etc. 

Anyway, getting this to the Adobe Engineering Team is beyond my capabilities.

[ls_rbls]

+++ UPDATE

So I went ahead and did more research with the Ricoh IM C4500 User Guide. And based on other threads that I've followed with the guidance provided by  Gary, it seems relevant to me that this issue could bethe type of driver that is used.

I was going to post yesterday something about this but I got discouraged when I saw the errors in the developer's console of my web browsers and erased that part of my initial reply.

This is what I forgot to ask:

• Are you scanning directly from the copier/scanner machine?

1. If yes, it seems that that when scanning an original with embedded text you may need to OCR the document in order to embed text data. See here: Scanning an Original as a PDF File with Embedded Text Data Specifically look in the link provided Functions Requiring Optional Configurations 
2. In regards to embedding text data, see this note : "Specify the image quality in [Original Type].

   To improve the recognition accuracy, select [Black & White: Text]."

3. Looking to some of the images of that document via the shared link to the document cloud in a web browser, the images with color are shown with no problem (noted in my screenshot), but the images that are in  black and white become all messed up or not recognized.

• Or, are you scanning from a Windows computer using the Ricoh drivers and the scanning software utility?

1. If yes, you may also want to test the producing PDF results by using a TWAIN driver versus WIA (and vice versa) and compare.
2. See here: The Drivers Contained on the Provided CD-ROM --->>> TWAIN Driver (Windows) Look the following note: " Supported Operating Systems - For the 64-bit version of Windows, the driver operates in 32-bit compatibility mode."
3. In addition see the section : 

   Type of Printer Driver

   • PCL 6

     With this driver, you can use the machine as a PCL 6 printer.

   • PostScript 3

     With this driver, you can use the machine as a PostScript printer.

4. Also see this other section: Installing the TWAIN driver 
5. Last, check if switching to WIA scanning driver also makes any difference. Look at the Functional Differences Between TWAIN and WIA Scanners The comparisson charts provide some interesting (and possibly relevant) considerations to this topic.

[ls_rbls]

Switching from TWAIN to WIA can also be done manually at the copier before scanning and sending the PDF by email.

[Roald5C66]

Hello again, and sorry for the slow reply. 

They are indeed scanning via the printer console and sending the result via mail. They do not have the ocr option, and have not asked for it. These are not advanced users, and I suspect that making them scan via software would be difficult.

We have asked Ricoh for an upgrade to the firmware on the printer, since other printers do not have this problem. This has not been done yet, because we have had to find a way to book this around the problematic support agent, but it seems we are getting there now. 

I do not know if this will solve the problems, but I am hopeful. I will try to post the results here.

Thanks!

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Hi Roald,

I have been informed that Adobe has verified the bug in Adobe Services and it is being triaged. 

Unfortunately there is no way to know how long it will take before this gets fixed so please do not expect immediate resolution of this problem. Hopefully it will not take ages.

Good luck,

[Roald5C66]

Thanks Gary!

In the short term I hope the firmware upgrade will be a solution, in the long term it would be nice that this is fixed (if it is indeed an error in Documentcloud).