Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Occasionally I get this message when trying to open a PDF file in an email attachment:
"it may be damaged or use a file format that preview doesn't recognise"
However, when I open the same attachment on my iPad, using GoodReader it does open, so the file is not damaged.
The issue seems to be with Preview and started recently (after new Mac updates maybe).
I don't want to post the PDF file here since it's company property.
Any suggestions ?
This seems to be happening with other iMac users too and wondering if it's not a bug with either Mail or Preview ?
I haven't heard of any such bug. Everything else would have to be ruled out.
Third-party plugins for Mail are a common cause of instability and unexpected behavior. This procedure will remove them. It's easily reversible if you don't like the results.
If you find that a plugin is causing the problem, either stop using it or refer to its developer for support. I can't tell you how to make it work.
Back up all data.
1. Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/Bundles
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Open
from the contextual menu.* A folder may open, or you may get an error message that the item can't be found. Either result is normal. If the folder does open and has contents, move the contents to the Desktop. Relaunch Mail and test. If there's no change, put the contents of the folder back and quit Mail again.
2. Repeat with this line:
/Library/Mail/Bundles
This time you may be prompted for your login password when you remove the items. Make sure they're removed from the folder and not just copied to the Desktop. If necessary, copy them first and then move the originals to the Trash.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.
The folder Library/Mail/Bundles does not exist on my computer, so could not perform either step 1 or 2
Would it help if I emailed you the corrupted attachment (with it's corresponding working file) ?
A few months ago I was forced to use Adobe PDF editor, but removed the program after using it (don't like it too much).
Could it be that there may be residual files that are causing problems on my iMac ?
I also have Adobe Creative Cloud installed on my computer, have no idea where that came from ?
You can't reach me by email. Back up all data. Rebuild the mailbox. Try to open the attachment again.
Rebuild did not help, in fact now the attached file has been replaced with garbled characters.
A sample here:
Content-Type: application/pdf; name="787 Electrical.pdf"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="787 Electrical.pdf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
JVBERi0xLjMKJcTl8uXrp/Og0MTGCjQgMCBvYmoKPDwgL0xlbmd0aCA1IDAgUiAvRmlsdGVyIC9G
bGF0ZURlY29kZSA+PgpzdHJlYW0KeAG1V8lu2zAQvfMr5kgfTIuUSEk9plnQogVSREAOdVEErh2k
TWzEdlDk7/soLlqswGqTBghIcZmZNzNvOH6kL/RIiUhSSigvpShzMlLRdknXtKbZxU7S7Y4k7Rb2
Q9kPnFYl/jo3GG6snLB6XR0VI5XIFclSaMpNLlRBOk+hmK1gkUlzoQ0kJZQlmvzZAou0eKDZhwdJ
pxuocxu6LIQpghiZirRGsGKJtRv4aCqBwUqz4CDhpKIpcCT4qhZYxjjFPyaJgCClhcmogqZzKbBI
Is this a Gmail account?
My account is an Apple account @icloud but the emails were sent from a hotmail account.
I asked my friend to send them again and this time I opened them on my Macbook (same OSX 10.8.5) with the same problem.
It's probably not my iMac, but something to do with OSX 10.8.5 or the way these attachments are processed by the sender ??
They open perfectly on my iPad though ??
Hotmail is another junk email provider. Whether it's better or worse than Gmail is debatable. Try to reproduce the problem by sending yourself a copy of the document via iCloud. If you can't, blame it on Hotmail. You've already found a workaround: download the attachments from the website.
My friend re-sent from an Outlook email account and had the same problem with a few of the attachments, strange ?
Here's the message:
Will try to reproduce the problem from a sender with an apple account.
If you downloaded ADOBE from other than the ADOBE web site - you may have downloaded an old or corrupted version of software. In 2013 Adobe announced a fix to the Reader - It ran embedded code when you opened the PDF - Adobe was hacked later that year.
If your company has an IT department you should be talking to them and showing them the problem.
Has anybody solved this issue??? I see TONS of posts about it.... but ZERO solutions!!! This is happening all over my school district!!! What's going on???
So I've made some progress with this.... if you download a PDF with Firefox to your desktop and do a "get info" check on it.... you can see that the file appears to be a link of some sort.... not an actual PDF file!!! Therefore, when you download it in Firefox, it must be changing it into a link (or whatever you would call that).
Is this a setting in Firefox??? If you go in Chrome and download the same PDF file, it opens up fine in Preview.... so something is going on within Firefox to cause this "damaged file" problem.
Problem opening PDF files with Preview
