PDF won’t display. Please wait …Error.

[coltenh46633294]

I am trying to fill and edit a PDF, but my mac overtime i open the file reads the following,  

Please wait... If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document. You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader for Windows®, Mac, or Linux® by visiting http://www.adobe.com/go/reader_download. For more assistance with Adobe Reader visit http://www.adobe.com/go/acrreader.....

However I have dowloaded this and still no results.

[Bernd Alheit]

Open the file in Acrobat Reader.

[~graffiti]

To add to Bernds great advice, if you are using Chrome, Edge or a 64bit version of Firefox, they don't use the Reader plug-in but have their own viewers which really hate some forms. Download the file first by right-clicking the link to the file and saving to your computer, then open in Reader.

[AnandSri · Accepted solution]

Hello coltenh46633294

Sorry for the delay in response to your query and apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please and try the suggestions from the following Kb doc PDF won’t display. Please wait … Link: https://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-8651

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

[DoctorMPRyan]

The answer is: the file is being opened by the browser and not adobe acrobat reader dc.

[Michelle22091088dsxm]

this does not work, i have no option to download or save the file. it is meant to be filled and printed but i cannot get to it. i have tried edge, explorer and chrome and my acrobat is up to date. 

What else can i try??

[try67]

It's impossible that the file can't saved or downloaded. This is a prerequisite for viewing any PDF file.

[PCHD3950]

We have the same problem and we have narrowed it down to forms created in Adobe Lifecycle, which isn't supported anymore. If you open the file and go to File >> Document Properties you should be able to see if this is the case with your file. If so, I would recreate it using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Hope this helps. 

[Altru5C2C]

Hi 

I am currantly having the same issue. I have followed all steps in this post and nothing is working.

[Dallin5E78]

I'm having the same issue, none of the proposed solutions work. Downloaded the PDF and still cannot open the PDF in Pro or Acrobat Reader. Also won't display in Outlook Preview, Chrome, or IE. 

[dr. chrisl47058917]

I had to download the file with the info that the PDF won't display and then go to my Norton 360 security software to undo the clearing of the macro script that was embedded within the PDF (forms). Once this was achieved by confirming three times I really wanted to do it, the pdf revealed itself in all its glory.

[defaultnyo7zv7c7wkd]

open it through adobe acrobat reader once.

<a href="https://bestvacuumbuy.com/best-vacuum-for-carpeted-stairs-top-5/"> Adobe<a/>

[cguzman1144]

Where do I add this? In the XML Source? Where do I include it?

Thank you.

[Test Screen Name]

Cguzman, that was just spam, unfortunately. Not a real reply. Just open it in Reader. 

[Ismat22175068yvze]

Thanks a lot for your help dr. chrisl47058917, it worked like magic. Actually, it was the only solution that worked for me after trying all the possible suggestions.

[L228989777e2w]

Thanks for this! Spent almost an hour trying to troubleshoot. THIS ADVICE WORKED.

I just want to add how to do so. On Norton, go to settings > Antivirus> Script Control > Off > select duration

[Christeen28917542psjq]

I had to follow a different route, but it was Norton blocking my document too.  Thanks for the solution!

[Sunny22453707z6a3]

Hey Everybody! 

I feel like im going to get banned for providing an actual solution but I understand first hand how fustrating this problem can be. 

Basically you need to Flatten the XFA file so you can google "XFA PDF to Normal flat PDF"

I use (link removed by moderator) personally 

Hope this helps!

[Test Screen Name]

Sunny, your solution won't work for people who can't even figure out how to download a PDF in the first place. And if they could download it, they wouldn't need to open it.... and if they convert an XFA form to other PDF, it is going to be useless as a form. This may even be illegal for government forms. So thanks for posting, but it's bad advice in my opinion.

[martafiixek]

As a developer of JavaScript applications, and a person that creates dynamic forms in Adobe LiveCycle for a banking company, I'm terrified that Adobe doesn't provide any way to modify the contents of this error message, nor it does provide the error message in multiple languages. Flatting the PDF? Then the form which contains multiple scripts will become unusable.

[Test Screen Name]

The message is not an error message. It is not under programmatic control - by definition, since you see it when a PDF reader has no XFA support. It is simply the text on page 1 of a normal PDF, which becomes visible when there is no XFA machinery to hide it.

XFA PDF delivery to uncontrolled end users has no place in this decade. As customers move to phones and tablets with no kind of XFA support, Adobe abandoned this idea long ago. But AEM includes a server-side component to convert in the fly to a live HTML form. That may be the way out if this mess (as least as a speedier transition to  real HTML forms). 

[martafiixek]

We are moving away from XFA and PDF documents as we are coding our application, taking in JSON data as a form structure, with predefined React components, taking in user data from the backend and doing all sorts of backend stuff with Java. But the project is still in progress. And as a person responsible for XFA forms I get emails from clients, that don't speak English. They don't know what to do with these forms, as the "error" message is in English. We wrote on our website that they should open the PDFs with Acrobat, yet, it's not enough.

You are saying that it's not under programmatic control. I thought, that it's the pdfium library used in Chromium that checks if the PDF is dynamic or static, and based on that decides, that it will either render it (if it's a static one), or it will render this "error" message. If it's not under programmatic control, where is the "error" message stored?

[martafiixek]

To add to my existing answer, Chromium already implemented XFA PDF viewer (available only in experimental mode), however, the viewer is kinda crumbly and most of the time looks a lot different than the Adobe viewer. Which makes the user experience horrible.

[Camelia23606079uqy8]

After unsuccessfully trying everything else, the only thing that worked for me was to create an Adobe account and be logged into the account when accessing the dynamic pdf document. While logged into Adobe, I clicked on the pdf document from the source, still got the same message stating there was a problem: please wait, etc. ...; I then saved the document on my computer; when I opened it from my computer (using acrobat reader), the document worked and it was in the dynamic format that was intended in order to fill it out and submit it to the organization which generated it. The document was created by that organization with something like Lifecycle.

[Daniel24698799n0k4]

Hello, I've been in the armed forces , nowadays I'm so tired of seeing this phrase appear every time I get a document. In the old days Adobe rarely had this problem, but now it seems to be going in a very bad direction for free users. There are many free pdf file readers distributed, and I recommend using another pdf reader program..