File is damaged or cannot be repaired

Report · Mar 31, 2008

I have Adobe Reader on my Vista OS. When I try to open a PDF file, I either get a message that states I must exit Adobe and when I click "OK," the file opens. However, on occasion, I'll get the following error message in which I cannot open the file and a blank Adobe window opens:

"file is damaged or cannot be repaired."

Has anyone experienced a similar problem? Any solutions? Thanks.

Report · Apr 08, 2008

I had the same problem with Adobe Reader 7, with Vista OS. I then downloaded Adobe Reader 8 and tried the open the file again, and got the same error. I then noticed that the file size was 0. Finally, I downloaded the PDF file from the website again, and then was able to open the PDF file with Adobe Reader 8. I had the same problem with a 2nd file. I repeated the above steps: downloaded the file again, and opened with Adobe Reader 8, and was able to read it.

Report · Apr 09, 2008

I've got the same problem. I'm using Acrobat 8 on a Windows XP Pro SP2 system. It started yesterday on most, not all, files I received from 2 different sources. They were, however, the same files. The files can be opened by the senders. My file sizes are not zero. I tried opening these files from 3 different computers all running Acrobat 8. I really need to solve this problem.

Report · Apr 10, 2008

I have an update that might help you guys. I had the pdf files I was having the problems with sent to me via my Hotmail account. I was able to open them without any problem on one of the same computers and with the same installation of Acrobat that was resulting in the earlier problem. I then forwarded the Hotmail e-mail to the account that I was using. This account comes to me through Outlook 2003. When it hit my outlook inbox I experienced the same problem as before. This leads me to believe that Outlook was causing the problem to begin with. This also started after I got an automatic update from Microsoft. Why am I surprised. I should go back to Notes for e-mail.

Report · Apr 10, 2008

Actually, it's probably not Outlook causing it.

Some ISP's encode file attachments to make the transfer faster. Encoding normally corrupts PDF's. There is a rather large and detailed FAQ on this subject.

Report · Jun 02, 2009

Hi,

I wonder if anybody has any more background to this "ISP encoding corrupting PDFs" ? I work in a technical industry, and we have a lot of different file types flying around via email (source code, binaries, executables, zips, tars etc etc) and the only files we ever have problems with are PDFs. Also this seems to have gotten much worse with the later revisions of Acrobat.

It seems to me that if there was an issue with ISP encoding, then it would affect other file types too.

Any other suggestions would be greatfully received - this PDF issue is driving me nuts!

Thanks in advance,

Mark

Report · Feb 04, 2010

I agree with Mark. I am using Mac OSX (v10.6), firebox to download some PDF's from FTP sites, and I recieve some PDF's via our company email. Our company email isn't filtered at all (small company).

When I download PDF's from an FTP site, they almost always work. When something is emailed to me (from a Window's computer) they often do not work.

How do we actualy FIX this issue? From what I understand, the error "file is damaged and cannot be reparied" doesn't actually have anything to do with a damaged file, but an incorrect reader. I am using Adobe Reader 9.3.0 (no more updates available.)

Eric

Report · Feb 04, 2010

BertW52 wrote:
Hi,
I wonder if anybody has any more background to this "ISP encoding corrupting PDFs" ? I work in a technical industry, and we have a lot of different file types flying around via email (source code, binaries, executables, zips, tars etc etc) and the only files we ever have problems with are PDFs.

I'll look around.

Before they switched these forums over to this software, their USED to be a very informative FAQ area that had a subject on this. I'm not sure where it's gone but there may be a KB article on it somewhere still.

Report · Feb 04, 2010

The problem is an old problem due to the way mail is handled. Acrobat pdf files are sometimes treated as if they are ascii files rather than binary files. This causes them to be corrupted as since mail handlers will sometimes handle ascii attachments differently than binary attachments. The work around is to zip or otherwise compress the file so that the attachment will be treated as a binary file. This same problem can occur with ftp as there are binary and ascii upload/download issues. These types of problems are common and go back to the early days of mailing on the internet. uuencoded files were frequently corrupted as well.

Report · Apr 10, 2008

Graffiti
Can you Please direct me to FAQ? I also wonder why the files were fine coming to my Hotmail account if ISP encoding is at fault.

Report · Apr 10, 2008

If you use your ISP's email services, the file may be encoded. If you use hotmail, you skip your ISP's service (you're only using their internet service at that point) and the files don't get encoded.

The link to the FAQ's is located towards the top of the page before this one. Look under Internet/Email issues.

Direct link: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbad474/0

Report · May 24, 2010

For what it's worth, forwarding it from my Outlook/Exchange Server email to my web-based (Gmail) and opening it on the exact

same computer worked like a charm. The "damaged" files are all coming from one vendor so I'm thinking the compression is happening on their side, if that's the issue. I asked them to zip all futher PDFs. Thanks for saving me time, effort, and the $14.99 to try one of the PDF file fixing software.

Report · May 02, 2012

I can really understand how would you feeling rightnow. Because I have also faced such a situation in my past. I was getting the same error something like this: file is damaged or cannot be reapired".

But you know what I just successfully repaired my PDF files and hence proved the error message wrong.

I think you can't fix it by yourself, what I mean is manually. But yeap, you can check something yourself, what I mean is PDF Repair software.

http://www.sysinfotools.com/recovery/pdf-recovery.html

It will surely help you to fix that error. Just check it. And my 2 little ears will wait for thanks from your side. Bye............

Report · Jul 08, 2013

Here is my solution to this problem. Documents made with acrobat 5.0 and earlier don't conform to adobe new standard for pdfs so, download bullzip pdf printer driver. Also download acrobat reader 5.0 from online. Now open your file in older acrobat 5.0 and it will open fine. Then when its up and loaded choose print and choose bullzip pdf print driver. and selft from preferences to print to file and name your file with .ps file extenison. the driver will create a postscript file on your harddrive that you can then run thru acrobat distiller XI and you will have a new compatiable pdf that will open just fine in new acrobat. You will know if the file you are trying to open needs converting if it says cant open or cant preview file. You can also check if your file is ok before doing this by opening photoshop and trying to open the pdf there and looking at one of the pages in photoshop. If you can open one page there and create a photoshop pdf from image and it opens in new acrobat you can proceed with my instructions. Hope this helps!

BTW Hey Adobe create a plugin or seperate program that converts older acrobat 5.0 and earlier files to the newer version of pdf and we wouldnt have to do this work around!!!

Bryan