So I am working in a group so I saved it back in the folder and zipped the folder and sent it. I then realised some things were wrong so i unzipped the file and opened it again and that's where the issues went wrong.
I'm seeing this too. A collaborator shared his folder structure in Creative Cloud. Every one of the seven projects that he shared with me has this error, only on my system. There are no PDFs anywhere in the Creative Cloud Files folder. There are very few AI files, I suppose that might be part of the problem...
I've heard it might have something to do with the folder structure being too deep (paths too long), but he and I both have the assets in the same folder structure (~/Creative Cloud Files).
I've heard it might be because there are special characters in the file names but that happens when you're going from Mac to PC, and he and I have the same Macs.
I honestly have no clue. There weren't a ton of AI files but there were some. My group is all on the same kind of mac also and we are all on the same version of After Effects and Illustrator.
I have found out from an Adobe engineer that this is a generic error message that is at once too vague and too specific. It may not have anything to do with PDFs at all, though I think it comes from a module used across Adobe apps to import vector artwork. Think of it as AE's version of "Sorry, an error occurred." You can probably get a little more precise (but not appreciably more useful) with thinking of it as "Sorry, something went wrong with a vector asset."
You get that error because an AI file that is saved to work with After Effects must be saved as a PDF compatible file. That's why the error message says it is a PDF error. AE is having trouble parsing the PDF data in the AI file.
The problem can come from too many paths, too many layers, memory problems, or a corrupted file. You don't fix it by looking for a PDF file, you start by restarting AE or Rebooting, purging memory and cache, closing unnecessary programs and trying again. If that does not solve the problem you open the original file in AI, take a look at it to see if you can find any problems, then do a save as and make sure that the PDF compatible file option is checked.
I had the same issue, If you use the AI files in your project you can get this error message. I found the corrupted file and I replaced the file with another AI document using the same name. Problem solved.
For me it was an AI file, I tried to remove those from my project until I got rid of the error and so I found the problematic one. I did not need it in my scene (wasn't on the timeline even) so I did not try to resave it, but it worked, tnx.
Search for .aep within the file. Rename it, (make sure to remove .aep), if this links to a illustrator file, open it, resave it. Should work. I just done this now, AE didn't crash. When trying to render, when it got to the scene where the error would pop up, it would crash and the render wouldn't complete. But after I done, as mentioned above, no issue and file works without crashing and error popping up.
Here's another solution to try if none of the others here have worked for you (they didn't work for me; in my case, part of the problem could be that the person who created the files was working on a Mac while I'm on a PC). On a whim, I tried renaming the "(Footage)" folder to just "Footage" (removed the parentheses) and for some reason that worked. Of course, it meant that everything had to be relinked, but once I replaced one file, After Effects found all the rest.
Ran into a similar issue recently when I handed off a project to another artist. I'm on a Mac and he's on a PC. He recieved the "PDF" error and we couldn't figure out why. I vaguely recalled that AE on PC's has a character limit, so i reduced the file names and amount of nested folder in the project and viola - it works. This may be why removing the paranthesis worked for you, maybe you were just a couple characters over the limit. Again, this is theory - but worth trying if you're stuck.
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