Receiving error message when opening .pdf

Report · Mar 31, 2019

Hello forum,

Hoping someone can help me troubleshoot this problem. I was using Acrobat Reader DC desktop app on my Windows 10 Home running PC to comment on a document for work. My computer crashed and when I rebooted and got to the recover document prompt and clicked yes I got the following error- "There was an error opening this document. Cannot recover original file." I am trying to troubleshoot this problem. Most questions I saw online had a different error referring to a damaged or corrupted file. I don't have that. I hadn't been manually saving as 1) I thought it was auto saving and 2) assumed if something happened it would be recoverable in some form. I realize this was a mistake, but I can't fix that, so after two hours with online chat support I am here asking you for help. Am I totally screwed here to recover some of my work? I already checked my temp folder as well, no .pdfs there. Thank you in advance for your advice.

Report · Apr 01, 2019

Hello Nicolerober,

We're sorry for the trouble you had with Adobe Reader. The error message you are getting is related to a corrupt or damaged PDF file and if the changes made in the PDF file were saved, then it is not possible to recover them and the PDF file.

Try opening the original PDF file and check if you can see the changes you made.

Adobe Reader or Acrobat save the changes automatically if you have enabled the auto-save option. You may enable the autosave option from Preferences, navigate to Edit>Preferences>Documents>under 'Save Settings' select 'Automatically save document changes to temporary fil ever: 1-99 minutes'>Click OK, restart the application.

For the current PDF file on which you are getting the error message, try opening the PDF file after making the following changes:

Navigate to Edit>Preferences>Security(Enhanced)>Disable 'Protected Mode at startup' and ' Enable Enhanced Security'>Click OK>restart the application and check.

Note: Disabling the Protected mode and Enhanced Security is only for testing purpose, please enable it back.

Let us know how it goes and share your observation.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.