file is damaged and can't be repaired

[bill.kindred@comcast.net]

I have a file that cannot be opened in acrobat XI pro or acrobat reader dc but opens just fine in Microsoft edge.  any suggestions on how I can repair this file and work on it locally?

(Link Removed due to Content Containing Government Confidential Material — please do not repost!)

Message was edited by: Dov Isaacs on behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Normally Microsoft Edge has significant problems with non-damaged PDF files. It is amazing that it can open this one. It may be that Edge is blatantly ignoring gross errors in that PDF file that are contrary to the PDF specification.

No Adobe technology appears to be able to even open this PDF file to be able to diagnose the problem. There is apparently something wrong with one or more of the elements included in the PDF file or how they are inserted, possibly the format of what appears to be scanned documents as images within the file. And given the size of the PDF file (over 21 megabytes), trying to eyeball the file to detect the problem is rather painful. Perhaps if you try printing that PDF file from Edge to Acrobat's Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance, you just might end up with a PDF file that can be opened by Acrobat or Reader.

Note that we have removed the link to the file since it apparently contained government confidential material that doesn't show signs of being declassified.

          - Dov

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

I finally found some time to work on this (I had downloaded the document when you first posted the link).

It looks like the content is declassified - at least based on the header information.

There are a number of problems with this document. Content streams are not the correct length they claim to be, some content streams seem to miss data, there are problems with the XREF table (maybe due to the first problem), and when I try to work around all the problems, I end up with some of the scanned images being corrupt. So, Dov's suggestion to print to the Adobe PDF printer from within Edge seems to be the best solution to recover at least some of the content.

[bill.kindred@comcast.net]

thank you and Dov for your replies.  printing from Edge to pdf was unsuccessful. looking at the complete file in Edge there are obviously some very serious problems that are likely artifacts of a faulty scan. the doc was obtained from National Archives and has long been declassified, some cover page is apparently missing.

Edge ignoring fatal errors is very interesting.