.pdf document

[harveyjones]

I received an email with attachment in PDF file. When I tried to open a PDF -file, it displays an error message that says: "Error format: PDF format is not correct, or the file is corrupted"

Then I tried to open my .pdf other tools for .pdf files, but they showed once again that same error message.

There is an option to solve this problem?

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Get them to send a non corrupted file? Try opening it in notepad and confirm the first few digits confirms its an actual pdf file and not something they accidently renamed to pdf.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

You're not an end user?

 

[CLC]

 

[fencepost]

Given the "Certification in IT from Microsoft" and 5 years as a software developer, programming is very different from tech work. I'd call him an end user, maybe more knowledgeable than most but still end user.

 

[SpaceSquad]

Hopefully not one of those "Enclosed is your invoice" emails

your_real_invoice.pdf.zip

 

[Moltuae]

Hopefully not one of those "Enclosed is your invoice" emails

your_real_invoice.pdf.zip

Yeah, the old double extension trick.

And Microsoft thought it was a good idea to "hide all extensions for known file types" by default why?

 

[fencepost]

Yeah, the old double extension trick.

I did have to disable detection of some doubled extensions on a mail filter in the past - for some reason the customer tended to get a lot of .doc.pdf files where the PDF conversion had retained the entire input file name. I never figured out which software was doing it, but since it was stuff coming from their customers I wouldn't have been able to do much about it anyway.

 

[Moltuae]

for some reason the customer tended to get a lot of .doc.pdf files where the PDF conversion had retained the entire input file name. I never figured out which software was doing it

I've seen that too. One of the free 'virtual pdf printer' programs does it I think, Bullzip PDF Printer if I remember correctly.

 

[gorrilagmc1]

Sometimes Ghostscript may help you, if not, see resources below where you find more variants of restoration .pdf documents...

https://www.openfiletool.com/pdfopen.html PDF Open File Tool

https://forums.adobe.com/message/6978758

Ghostscript will repair your corrupted PDF automatically… if it can open it in the first place (that is, if it is not damaged beyond repair). But afterwards you’ll still need to double-check the result…

On Windows, try this one:

gswin32c.exe ^

-o repaired.pdf ^

-sDEVICE=pdfwrite ^

-dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress ^

corrupted.pdf

 

[fencepost]

I guess I'll throw in an actual response to the original problem as well. The PDF file format stores a bunch of important information at the end of the file, including an index of where in the file each object is, how many objects there are, and where in the file that index of objects is. If the file is truncated, all of that trailing information is gone and many programs won't be able to handle it. PDF repair programs will go through the file from the beginning looking for those objects and effectively rebuilding that index information.

The other major factor to consider is that any 'damaged' or 'corrupted' email attachment these days may actually be malicious, with the damage specially-crafted to trigger bugs (particularly stack/heap overflows) in specific versions of software.

The correct response to any corrupt file in these days of emailed file-based attacks is to delete the file and ask for a correct version from the sender, not to keep trying to find a program that will open the file be affected by the vulnerability and infect your system with a cryptolocker variant.​

 

[Tech Savvy]

I've seen some funky pdf stuff when downloading an attachment from outlook after a Windows 10 upgrade. Try reinstalling microsofts print to pdf printer

 

[JoeMcDonalds]

Many factors can prevent a PDF from opening in Adobe Reader or Acrobat, including these:
The PDF is damaged.
The Reader or Acrobat installation or update is damaged.
Reader or Acrobat is out of date.
File type is unrecognizable.
PDFs were created with non-Adobe programs.
Try the suggestions provided on the below link.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/cant-open-pdf.html