MacOS Sierra "blank PDF"

I have the same issue having upgraded to Sierra on an iMac. I handle a lot of PDF files and store many as archives. Previously all these files would view without a hitch using Preview or via Safari or in Mail. I did no use Acrobat Reader or any other PDF app as I relied on Preview. Now the new macOS Sierra has sent me backwards, many of these files are now unreadable (showing blank pages). I regularly receive email's with important PDF attachments with Apples Mail app but they only show blank pages. It appears to be a bug with the Preview app technology as this is used in Safari and Mail to display these and other files. If I use Chrome, another mail app or Adobe Acrobat the PDF files all display correctly. This is very frustrating and the problem lies at Apple's door in my mind. I have submitted a bug request. My next step is to go through telephone support, if I can find the time.

My main observation is that all the 'blank' PDF files I have are generally text based and 'created' using another application (such as a database report). If the PDF contains scanned 'images' of pages, then I am able to view these ok using Preview.

I hope this gets fixed soon.

Same problem here. Running MacOS 10.12.1 on a MBPR 15" (mid 2015). Some PDF's open with blank pages in Safari or when downloaded and opened in Preview. Others don't show up blank. The ones that do show up blank open fine in an alternate browser (Firefox), but show up blank when the "Open in Preview" instead of "Save" option is selected.

Hello,

There are already some palliatives on the internet for this bug.

For me the best one is to install cairo (brew or port) and after that pdftocairo blank.pdf -pdf good.pdf

They will appear some erros but in the end all just fine

My best regards

The only blank pdf's until now are, for me, of the kind:

%PDF-1.4

1 0 obj

<<

/Creator (Oracle10gR2 AS Reports Services)

/CreationDate (D:20160922113722)

/ModDate (D:20160922113722)

/Producer (Oracle PDF driver)

/Title (*@*.ulisboa.pt)

/Author (Oracle Reports)

>>

endobj

5 0 obj

<</Length 6 0 R

/Filter [/ASCII85Decode /FlateDecode]

>>

stream

On top of my Magic Mouse dead in one week. Now I realize Preview doesn't load PDFs anymore on both our Sierra iBook Pro or the El Cap iMac. If you check you'll see this issue goes back two years. Preview is just lousy software for PDFs. Don't waste your time with Apple fixing this. They don't care of they would have fixed it by 2015.

Go get Adobe Acrobat. It isn't perfect but it does PDFs very well. It's worth the money.

Sorry to hear of your problems. I had no issues with Preview in El Capitan it had 'previewed' PDF files regularly in my mail app day after day. Following 'upgrade' to Sierra, these same PDF files were showing as 'blank' pages.

I have installed Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files. Unfortunately, I still get blank previews in mail and have to open with Acrobat to see them. I've lost the convenience of the Preview app. For what good it will do I have reported this to Apple. For me its a step backwards and not seeing any benefit of Sierra at all.

I just upgraded to 10.12.2 and now have this issue. Although it seems to only affect encrypted PDFs which really *****.. Going to open a support case on it, I suggest you do the same..

Uparaded to 10.12.2 and previously blank PDF attachments can now be viewed using preview, so it has worked for me. However, same attachment on latest iOS update previews with blank pages!!! What's going on?

Confirmed! All of the PDFs work in MacOS 10.12.2. Thank goodness.

Another command-line work-around:

I found out the file produced by my scanner was a PDF version 1.2 so I tried to convert it in PDF version 1.4 using the following ghostscript command and it worked (the file content becomes visible after conversion):

$ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -o converted.pdf original.pdf

GhostScript can be found in all package distributions, eg. on MacPorts:

$ sudo port install ghostscript

Olivier.

Apparently the latest Sierra update 10.12.2 solves this question.

Wow olivier169, thanks! Was lengthy to get XCode, MacPorts and GhostScript going, but this worked for me. And I deal with a ton of pdf's for real estate.

Unlike others in this thread, I was on Sierra 10.12.2 and still had missing, corrupt looking pdf files (majority of my PDF files) which previously worked before updating to 10.12.1 then up to 10.12.2. I even updated to the (as of today) Public Beta 10.12.3, and pdf's in Preview were still displaying incorrectly for me. They had only looked correct in Adobe Acrobat, but for quick workflows, I like to check files in Preview, or view files by hitting space-bar in Finder.

Using the GhostScript command you provided has been the only successful work-around to get my files looking correct in Preview again. Thanks!

You can try this:

In Finder goto StartupDisk (mostly MacintoshHD), then open Library, in there open the InternetPlug-ins folder, in there delete the two Adobe PDF plugins: you don't need them, the built in apple pdf plugins (not visible here) are much more competent.

Then restart the mac.

Lex

Thanks kc2011 will do!

Well, It looks like some thing works, but not others.. If you edit a PDF that has OCR and save it the OCR layer is wiped out..

Getting there!