Ubuntu

unable to open pdf

Asked by Peter

My customer has recently encountered a problem when trying to open most of their pdfs that they have been referencing for years on their pc. Reader has a popup box that says "Adobe Reader could not open 'file.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded

I have tried various programs to recover/restore/repair them, they all say the files aren't PDF files. I have not paid for any recovery programs but would be willing to if they can demonstrate they can fix the problem first.

Thanks

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Solved by:
JesseEdwar
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El Achèche ANIS (elacheche) said : 		#1

Did you tried to open one of the PDF files using the application "evince" it's pre-installed on Ubuntu!

Or you can use the command less via the terminal!

Revision history for this message
Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#2

Here are examples of Terminal commands for checking if a .PDF file really is a valid .PDF file:

$ evince file.pdf

$ file file.pdf
file.pdf : PDF document, version 1.4

$ head file.pdf
%PDF-1.4
%����
1 0 obj
<< /S /GoTo /D (chapter.1) >>
endobj
4 0 obj
(Motivation and Introduction)
endobj
5 0 obj
<< /S /GoTo /D (section.1.1) >>

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install pdfresurrect

$ pdfresurrect file.pdf

$ pdfresurrect file.pdf

Revision history for this message
Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#3

pdfresurrect file.pdf | head

pdfresurrect file.pdf | tail

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Best JesseEdwar (jesseedwar) said : 		#4

Please try PDF Repair Toolbox. The tool reads corrupted PDF files and saves all recovered information to a new file for Adobe Reader/Adobe Acrobat.

For more: https://www.repairtoolbox.com/pdfrepair.html

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Peter (peterwigg) said : 		#5

Thanks JesseEdwar, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#6

And another fake message created just for the purpose of promoting dubious 'repair whatever Windows files' software that does not have any relationship to Ubuntu.

What all these questions have in common:

1. The person asking that question registered on Launchpad just shortly before creating the question
2. The person answering that question registered on Launchpad just shortly before creating the question
3. Both persons have not done any other action on Launchpad except asking, answering and accepting the answer
4. Most of the persons have registered on Launchpad with an e-Mail address of the structure <email address hidden>
5. In most cases the question is not related to Ubuntu at all (not clearly evident in this case).

Compare this question with
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+question/267123 https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/267061
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/267346
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/266631