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Known Participant
January 28, 2020
Question

Does Printing via Reader Test Each Page of a PDF?

  • January 28, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 912 views

I have had the experience of thinking that a PDF file was good because it seemed to open and close OK. Then I found that, sometimes, I only discover that a file has problems when I try to print it or, even better, add or remove pages from it.

 

There are various canned tools to test PDFs. They don't necessarily flag the same files. In previous testing, I found that a Windows batch file, running Adobe Reader to print each PDF file, one at a time, caught some problem files that the other tools didn't catch.

 

I am trying to test some PDFs now. I am in the process of resurrecting the batch approach I used previously. But it occurs to me that maybe this approach is not actually testing each page, and maybe a different approach would be better for that purpose. Suggestions?

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1 reply

Brainiac
January 28, 2020

The only Acrobat component to "test" PDF is the preflight function of Acrobat Pro. I'd recommend you test that. Printing a file will accidentally test many things, but not because it is a tester. If page 7 has a problem and you look at page 1 on screen, Acrobat has no reason to look at page 7. But if you print, it must read all pages, and it will see the things that get in the way of printing. Many other problems may slip past.