We just recently purchased and began deploying PDF Architect 4 Pro on computers here at our office. Unfortunately we have discovered that computers which are not running the PDF Architect software are not able to open PDF files that were created or edited with PDF Architect 4. Any computer that has Adobe Reader X or Adobe Acrobat 8.1 gets the error message “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired”. Any ideas why computers with these version of Adobe cant open an Architect Pro PDF file?
In my search to resolve this problem I found some interesting information on Adobe’s web site. Adobe says that when you encounter the error message “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired” it is because extraneous bytes appear before %PDF at the head of the file. Based on this, PDF Architect 4 Pro, must be writing characters before the %PDF tag in the .PDF file generated. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Any help would be appreciated. I cant be the only one having this issue.
Anyone have this problem? Any ideas?
Hi,
sorry I saw the other less detailed post first and answered there.
Based on the additional information in this post I created a PDF with PDF Architect and opened it in a text editor, it directly starts with %PDF-1.7. If you open one of the problematic PDFs in a text editor, is there anything previous to this entry? Are you creating “regular” PDF, or PDF/A ?
best regards,
HI Robin, Thank you for the response. I did as you had suggested and opened one of the problem .PDF files in a text editor. The %PDF-1.7 is at the start of the document, so there must be a different issue as to why the file isn’t opening in Adobe Reader X or Adobe Acrobat 8.3.1. New information… I downloaded and installed Adobe Acrobat Reader DC on my computer. Believe it or not, the .PDF file created with Architect Pro 4 will open in Acrobat Reader DC. I immediately went to try the same file in Adobe Acrobat 8.3.1 and got the same error as before. To test things further, I re-opened the problem PDF in Adobe Reader DC and saved it as the same file name. I then went back to Adobe Acrobat 8.3.1 and the problem PDF opened up. Adobe Reader DC must have changed something in the file, but I have no idea what it could be. How can I tell whether we are saving a file as a .PDF or PDF/A. We are just editing existing PDF’s or creating new PDF’s using Architect Pro 4 default settings.
Never heard back from you Robin. Still have the same issue. We spent about $500 on PDF Architect licenses and have a program that makes PDF’s which are incompatible with versions of Adobe Reader older than DC. Sorry to say it but I wish we would not have spent the money on PDF Architect.
Hi,
sorry for the delayed response, we are still investigating this issue.
I wasn’t able to reproduce this with Adobe Reader X (10.1.4), all PDFs created/modified by PDF Architect 4 opened there without any issue. Please send us one of the problematic PDFs to support(at)pdfforge(dot)org so we can have a closer look at it. One of the main reasons to use PDF is the compatibility, so if this is an actual bug (and not a settings issue) we are eager to fix it.
If you are using the default settings you aren’t creating PDF/A, this is only available for PDF->PDF/A conversion.
best regards,