Acrobat 9 Pro: Message "An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display page correctly.

[pdfCrazy]

Hi everyone,

I posted this in September: "Over the past week, I have received pdfs from 2 different graphic design contractors that do not open correctly in Acrobat 9 Pro. There is an error in the document and when I scroll to the page where the error is, I get: "An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person hwo created the PDF document to correct the problem." I did this, and the contractor remade the pdf 3 times, and I still couldn't open it. This contractor is already using CS5. For the problem today, I haven't asked for it to be remade yet--decided to see if I could find out if anyone else is having the same problem. The second contractor is using CS4. The only thing that I have done differently at my end over the past week is upgrade CS4 to CS5. I already had Acrobat Pro 9 so I didn't update it when I updated my CS5 products. Should I have upgraded Acrobat 9 anyway? Somehow, it doesn't feel right that this is the problem. Any info on this would be appreciated."

I got one response from that posting, suggesting that the pdf was corrupted over email. That wasn't the problem.

What I didn't say above is that whenever I got an error message upon opening the pdf and clicked OK, I got another message: "Insufficient data for an image." I found that one or all of the images in the pdf were missing. Upon further investigation, the contractor and I found that sometimes the error message pointed to a specific font used--that being a Helvetica Bold font. Once we substituted it with a Helvetica Neue LT Std Adobe Opentype font, we no longer had an issue.

However, the problem rose it's ugly head today--what, 6 months later! I'm talking about 2 different pdfs this time.

For PDF#1, I got this error message about the font: "Cannot extract the embedded font 'JNAGNS+HelveticaNeueLTStd-Bd'. Some characters may not display or print correctly."  When I click OK, I get another: "Insufficient data for an image." The images don't show up in the pdf. What I don't understand about this pdf is that this is one of those that was fixed in September. The only changes made in the document was to paragraph text--none to the text in the images. When I opened the revised pdf today, I am getting the same message again. This makes no sense.

I returned to my September blog to see if any further advice had been posted, but nada--not even anything from Adobe about it. I goggled until I found where someone suggested running a "Report PDF syntax issues" analysis in Preflight. I did that and even though the analysis showed the pdf passed, I checked the fonts in the list and saw that the one pointed to in the error message showed that a long list of glyphs were missing on both pages of the pdf. I have asked my contractor to replace her font with a new one, in case it has gotten corrupted. Haven't a new pdf to open yet.

Then when I opened PDF#2, I got the message: "An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person hwo created the PDF document to correct the problem." When I ran the "Report PDF syntax issues" analysis in Preflight, I found got this warning: "Invalid operand(s) for operator (1 match on 1 page)". I clicked through and under "Page Description Errors/Invalid operand(s) for operator", it identifies Operator Name, Stream State, Operators Read, and Traversal Path. Under "Trigger Values" is says "Invalid operand(s) for operator: is true". None of this means a thing to me so I can't figure out what the problem is.

Let me say this: Both the contractor and I are using CS5 and Acrobat Pro 9, on Lion. If it helps, the contractor also sent one of the problem pdfs back in September to my boss who is running Acrobat Pro 9 on Windows 7 and she got the same messages.

Does anyone out there have a suggestion for us? PLEASE HELP!!!!

[Glenn_McDowall]

pdfCrazy wrote:

"Insufficient data for an image."

I get this message when opening a pdf that has been copied from an ftp site before it has finished uploading, essentially its incomplete or corrupt, hence the suggestion about corruption over email. Is it possible somewhere in the chain someone is not allowing enough time?

"Cannot extract the embedded font 'JNAGNS+HelveticaNeueLTStd-Bd'. Some characters may not display or print correctly." 

Assuming its not the same reason as above. How is the pdf being edited, this error reads as if text corrections have been attempted in a font subset, rather than a full font.

[Bill12]

I have not read your post completely, but you might want to look at the document properties (ctrl-D) and check the first tab. It should give you an idea how the PDF was made. There may be a compatibility issue, particularly if they created it in AA X. In that case you might want to suggest they try using (in AA X) Save As>Reduce File Size or Save As>PDF Optimize and set the compatibility to AA9. Also, ask them to be sure that the file is encoded (MIME typically) for teh e-mail or possibly zipped for use with e-mail. There is an outside chance they added something in AAX that is not compatible with AA9. Most things should be, but you may just have one of those cases.

[kristin_ayers]

PDFCrazy - I too was having the EXACT same issue.

After hours of uploading and re-saving, re-EVERYTHING, I have found the issue.

In my FTP program (I am using FileZilla) I had the File Transfer Type set to ASCII. Once I changed the setting to "Auto", everything worked as it should.

I really hope this helps you, or, someone else having the same issue.

Cheers!

KA

[Bill12]

Sorry, I had not caught that you were loading the PDF onto a server. That would have been the first thing to check. It is also an issue with e-mail as some mail packages interpret PDFs as ASCII because the first few characters are. Glad you found the problem.

[pdfCrazy]

Thanks to all for posting suggestions. As it turned out, the contractor who was having a problem reinstalled Acrobat 9. She works from home and is emailing the pdfs to me. Things were running smoothly until this past week, when the problem started again. Whenever I get a pdf that won't open properly or print, I asked her to zip it and it is no longer a problem. Last week, I had the same problem start with a contractor in Florida and she also zips the pdf when there is a problem. Now I am thinking the problem might be at my end. I wonder if something is happening to them when they come through our firewall at work. I asked IT about it before but they didn't have a clue what the problem might be. Right now, zipping is the answer...who knows how long that will continue to work.

[andrews1951]

Hi all,

Same problem / error message converting .ppt into .pdf using "save as" function.  Tried to open my saved .pdf in Acrobat DC on same laptop (so no "sending" errors). Then used the "Print to pdf" function in Word print destination menu - this shows conversion progress page by page - I noted it always stopped at page 4 of my .ppt which was simply a picture in .png format.  I "saved picture as" .jpg, "replaced" the picture in slide 4 and hey presto - the save to pdf worked  - for me at least 🙂