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Cannot Open PDF Forward From iPhone

Our clients are sending in emails which a few of our users are viewing them on their iPhone. When they forward the message to other users the pdf files won't open. It gives an error message, "There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired". I've tried saving the pdf to the desktop then try to open it with no success and the same error message.I've also checked to make sure the Add-in is enabled.

We are on Acrobat X 32 bit Standard 10.1.10 and Windows 7 x64 Pro/Ult. Outlook is 32 bit version. Any ideas what the problem is?

Posted on Apr 27, 2016 12:53 PM

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44 replies

Jun 20, 2016 8:36 AM in response to jimmys-iphone

what a waste of my time. apple care / support is total crap. the chat support person can't even VIEW links to these forums?? Really??? Of course the support person had no idea of the issue or it being listed as an outstanding issue for 9.3.2. I'm having a senior support person call me back. Details as I get them. Not confident anything will be done. Seems issues are fixed in the beta for 9.3.3 as someone previously posted.

Jul 6, 2016 4:08 AM in response to Boon Hong Wong

This did not work. While outlook did open the message after changing the extension, there was no legible content, just some crazy characters, and no attachments. However, if you open a good pdf document using notepad you will see they all begin the same with %PDF and then the version number and some tag-like content. The pdf documents received from an iPhone, opened with notepad do not have the same format. Below are 3 examples of extract from good PDF docs and 3 PDF docs sent from an iPhone. Obviously, something on the iPhone (iOS, apple mail) is changing the format of a PDF document which makes no sense. PDF means Portable Document Format and is supposed to be OS agnostic and portable across devices.


Good PDF docs

%PDF-1.4

2 0 obj
<<


%PDF-1.7
%âãÏÓ
1 0 obj
<</Type /Pages


%PDF-1.6
%âãÏÓ
2801 0 obj <<


Sent by iPhone

Eç Š÷~º&= ƒ1}5¾*Ü¢g(›mzã»ÛO Êf¢–g‡ «mÊ&×½µë^·Ó „Èœ®‹(~ÔŒLôž®÷«L´


Eç Š÷~º&= ƒ1}5¾*Ü¢g(›mzã»ÛO Êf¢–g‡ «mÊ&×½µë^·Ó „Èœ®‹(~ÔŒLôž®÷«L´


Eç Š÷~º&= ƒ1}5¾*Ü¢g(›mzã»ÛO Êf¢–g‡ «mÊ&×½µë^·Ó „Èœ®‹(~ÔŒLôž®÷«L´

Jul 26, 2016 10:12 AM in response to thorod336

I would be very curious if you could let the group know what the "/Producer" tag is that exists in plain text within the PDF file (viewing a pdf with notepad) as it seems that only certain PDF files are effected?

We have not been able to successfully reproduce the issue and we are also hopeful that the 9.3.3 patch has resolved the issue altogether!

Jul 26, 2016 10:19 AM in response to thorod336

Obviously, something on the iPhone (iOS, apple mail) is changing the format of a PDF document which makes no sense. PDF means Portable Document Format and is supposed to be OS agnostic and portable across devices.

That is the theory. In reality, there are so many tools now to "write" PDFs that these issues come up.


It's like sending a "word doc" now. What flavour? What version was it created in? How was it saved?


PDFs have suffered from simple font issues since day 1. If the creator does not embed or convert the fonts before saving, the receiver may not be able to render the file.


Checking the lineage of the sent file is part of the sleuthing you may need to do.

Jul 26, 2016 6:00 PM in response to Bohler-IT

I don't know what the "/Producer" tag is, all I know is that every PDF file that opens correctly begins with %PDF, though that is not enough to guarantee they will open. If you open jpegs and tifs with notepad you will also see a common pattern within the first line. Probably with many file types. If I have a file without an extension I open it with notepad to see if it is one I recognize.

Jul 26, 2016 6:08 PM in response to LACAllen

That doesn't change the fact that an email with a pdf attachment forwarded by an iPhone produces an attachment that doesn't open on Windows when the same email forwarded by Outlook Web Access produces a workable PDF on any device. And yet the attachment sent by the iPhone can be opened on the iPhone. That points to an action in the iPhone mail process that "proprietizes" the attachment.

Oct 9, 2016 4:37 PM in response to baldwinjd

Same problem here. PDF successfully received and viewed in Apple Mail on either iPad or iPhone. I use Office365 as my email provider. If I forward the message and attachment, the recipient cannot see the attachment. Some have suggested Outlook for iOS may be a solution, but the Outlook app is little more than beta and really junky. It's time for Apple to fix this issue that has existed in, at least, 4 versions of iOS.

Dec 31, 2016 2:17 PM in response to gcesupp

Greetings,

I have iOS 10.1 mail in use and i see that holding down on the attachment and using quick view works. Using Copy to acrobat also works. However after upgrade to iOS 10.2 quick view only shows first page. We must use Copy to adobe Acrobat to view PDF attachment now until Apple fixes the issue with quick view. This is with PDF as attachment "type/image" or attachment "type/application" sent from any email client.

Cannot Open PDF Forward From iPhone

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