PDF File Repair or Recovery

perkinma on 08/09/2011 - 13:56

Hoping someone on the forums here might be able to point me in the right direction.

Have been emailed a pdf file that just generates the message "There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired".

A Google search returns a bucket-load of supposed 'repair tools' that in general look completely like bloatware rubbish programs that install more spamware than do any good.

Would anyone hazard a recommendation on a pdf file repair program that might actually work or at least wont trash my computer?

In terms of being resent the file I have put in a request but not confident that this will actually happen, it was sent too long ago. If I could recover the text out of the file I think that might be sufficient for what I need.

General Discussion

Comments

  • scrimshaw on 08/09/2011 - 19:15

    What sort of PDF viewers have you tried on it?

    Asides from Adobe Reader X and Foxit PDF, there's also Sumatra PDF, Nitro PDF, Google Docs and CorelDraw / Adobe Illustrator is also able to open PDF files.

    You could also try converting the PDF to a Word document, using one of the many online conversion tools (e.g Zamzar or PDF to Word )

  • perkinma on 09/09/2011 - 08:25

    Thanks Scrimshaw. Had tried Adobe Reader X and Corel.

    Have now tried Sumatra, Nitro and PDFToWord but unfortuanately none worked.

  • rygle on 10/09/2011 - 12:49

    Have you tried googling "fix damaged pdf". There are things like http://www.pdf-repair.com/how_to_repair.htm that come up.

    Alternately you could ask your friend to resend the document.

    • perkinma on 10/09/2011 - 14:38

      Hi rygle, yes had tried Google and unfortuanately Advanced PDF Repair (as per your link) are exactly the kinds of programs I am trying to avoid - heaps of positive reviews that strangely all seem to use the exact same wording with nothing that seems to actually impartially review the capability of the product.

      However I did try this one just in case. It indicated that it could repair the document and pushed the whole 'pay now to save a copy' line. However, strangely, when I went to preview the recovered document it actually just loaded Adobe Reader X which of course couldn't open the file and returned the same error it always does.

      Just for kicks I decided to browse the website to see how much it costs - $155AUD. Pretty pricey for a program that on the surface appears to just load Adobe Reader X which already has the basic file repair included for free.

      Also saw that it had an Awards page, first 'Award' was 5 cows from Tucows. Easy enough to check so loaded up Tucows - only 4 cows and 27% popularity . Hmmmm. Tried another one at random "Editors choice award at FreeTrialSoft". Tried to find FreeTrialSoft - dead-end domain. A quick scan through the rest of the awards pretty much sums up the supposed capability of this product.

  • tim_geo on 11/09/2011 - 02:08

    Are you sure the PDF file is intact? Open it in a text editor and compare it to another working PDF, does it look similar-ish?

    Quite often I see broken PDF files that are actually HTML files.

    • perkinma on 11/09/2011 - 20:12
      +1

      Good point. Tried to open as HTML but just comes up with reams of gibberish text. I compared to a working pdf and it does appear that it is plausible that it is a pdf file, it certainly has similarities between the good file and the bad file. So unfortuanately I am leaning towards definately damaged pdf file.

      First characters in the file are also "%PDF-1.3 1 0" so hopefully this is a positive indicator as well.

      Thanks tim_geo.

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