PDFs Corrupted

spddemun · 06 Mar 2023

For about 6 mos., I am finding various .pdf's won't open and says they are corrupted (free version of Adobe Reader).

It is happening with many scans (I've been going paperless for all at-home stuff for 5 years) saved on the computer or externals/USBs. Our house flooded and we lost everything in bottom drawers, so trying to avoid future loss.

Also, it's happening with recent files in emails from my companies (bills, tests), several at once, some corrupted/won't open, others are fine.

I've tried looking at Properties of documents and I don't see anything there to "fix"?

Really concerned now because gone paperless, and physical documents shredded (.pdf scans checked and opened first before shredding).

Suggestions on how to get uncorrupted, or open/save with another Reader?

Anibor · 06 Mar 2023

I create PDFs by scanning documents frequently, don´t recall having encountered a corrupted one ever.

Sometimes, the reader I use, PDF X-Change Editor, opens the PDF but reports a minor "error", and it suggests to save the PDF to clear it, which always works. This only happens with scanned PDFs.

Have you tried to open the corrupted ones with another PDF reader?

Ghot · 06 Mar 2023

spddemun said:

For about 6 mos., I am finding various .pdf's won't open and says they are corrupted (free version of Adobe Reader).

It is happening with many scans (I've been going paperless for all at-home stuff for 5 years) saved on the computer or externals/USBs. Our house flooded and we lost everything in bottom drawers, so trying to avoid future loss.

Also, it's happening with recent files in emails from my companies (bills, tests), several at once, some corrupted/won't open, others are fine.

I've tried looking at Properties of documents and I don't see anything there to "fix"?

Really concerned now because gone paperless, and physical documents shredded (.pdf scans checked and opened first before shredding).

Suggestions on how to get uncorrupted, or open/save with another Reader?

Use a browser to open them, then save them from there.
Somehow, opening them in a browser, "then" saving them, un-corrupts them.

Normally, I have Firefox set to "save" pdf files, rather than open them in the browser.
But when I get one of those "corrupt" ones, I change the Firefox setting to... "Open in Firefox".
Then when it's opened in Firefox, I save the pdf to my comp straight from the browser window.

THEN I can open it with SumatraPDF, my pdf reader.