PDF repair utilities

Factual Questions
1

I have a PDF file that, when I try to open it using Acrobat 6.0, gives me the unhelpful error message: “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired.” It’s not a critical document, but it would be really nice if I could recover at least the document’s text, if not all the content. I did a little searching, but I wasn’t able to come up with any utilities that were able to help me out.

Are there any free utilities out there that can do what I’m looking for? Or should I be trying something else? Or is this file likely lost for good?

2

Ghostscript and GhostView may help (try Google).
Of course, you could always try wordpad.exe. A PDF file is a form of Postscript file, which is a plain text format. It may take you a while to get past the headers and font definitions to find the text, and if the text has been kerned (space adjusted) each letter or word may have its own chunk of postscript code around it. If your PDF was created from a scanned file, you will not have any chance at all, as the PDF will just be a bunch of images.

Simon

3

Yeah, I tried Google. (Doesn’t everyone?) I’ll take a look at Ghostscript and GhostView.

I also tried using a text editor without success. There was no plain text to be found. The source file was a Word document.

4

I was receiving that error message for most PDF files a while back.

Try this:

Open Adobe Reader (the Adobe application, not just a PDF file in your browser)

Click “Help” and then “Detect and Repair”

That took care of the problem for me. If that doesn’t work, try reinstalling the Adobe Reader.

5

Try www.planetpdf.com and look under the tools. Dunno if they have anything for repairs, but if it exists, it is probably found there.

6
      • You can also open normal Acrobat documents in Adobe Illustrator, and usually edit at least most of the components.
        ~