adobe acrobat reader could not open file

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
August 21, 2023
2 replies
7802 views

I have an issue where when trying to open a pdf document attached to an email, the error

adobe acrobat reader could not open filename.pdf because it is either not a supported file type, which it is, or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasnt correctly decoded).

has anyone else had this issue and found a soloution, I am unable to find anything that assists with this issue.

adobe acrobat reader is up to date

PDF

This topic has been closed for replies.

Amal.

Community Manager

Hi @avbcit

Thanks for reaching out.

Hi there

Hope you are doing well and sorry to hear that

Is this an issue with a particular PDF file or with all the PDFs? Please try with a different PDF file and check. If the file is stored on a shared network/drive please download it to your computer locally and then try again.

What is the version of the Acrobat DC you are using? To check the version go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure you have the recent version 22.1.20169 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also try to repair the installation from the help menu (Win Only) and see if that works.

You may also go through the help page https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/pdf-error-1015-11001-update.html and check if that works.

Amal

A

avbcitAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi

the pdf's are not stored anywhere, they are in an email, in outlook, it is not ever pdf that fails just every now and again. If i save the pdf, first, i am usually alright. if i forget then i can open the emailed pdf, a couple of times before i get the error.

the version is 2023.003.20269, there are no updates, i have already rebooted the machine and it is on more than one.

i have tried to repair, but still have the same issue.

the help topic attached, i have already looked at that and tried but i still have the same issue.

Thank you

Tracy

Amal.

Community Manager

do you have any update for this issue

Hi there,

Acrobat products have historically opened a PDF as long as the %PDF-header started anywhere within the first 1024 bytes of the file. No checks were performed on the extraneous bytes before the %PDF-header. However, the 10.1.5 and 11.0.01 updates improve security by enforcing stricter parsing of the PDF-header. The product now refuses to open the small fraction of PDFs that do not correctly start with the '%PDF-' header and an error appears:

Please try to save the PDF to your computer locally and then try to open it with Acrobat/Reader DC application and check.

Regards

Amal