Hey folks,

A colleague is having a recurring problem - he's receiving PDFs that are "damaged or in a format that Preview does not recognize". Adobe Reader 9 and 10 also won't open them.

A cursory search of the web seems to indicate that this is a problem with files sent from Outlook 2011, but it appears to be inconsistent.

He's running a recent (but not the latest) version of Thunderbird as his mail client. Pulling IMAP from both his Gmail and University (Microsoft server).

Thoughts?

M

I’m currently working through a similar problem with a client.

A possible work-around is to “print” the file and select “save as PDF” instead of sending to an actual printer, this avoids the original application creating the file.

It doesn’t always work, another tactic is to compress the file (Zip) when sending as an attachment. I’ve had problems when the security software on a clients server would chew up the attachment and leave it corrupted. Zipping it seemed to calm things down.

In order to "Print" the file, one must be able to open it. Even choosing it in the Finder and selecting "Print" will result in an attempt to open - and this is where we're stuck. Nothing we have will open it.

I opened it with TextWrangler to check the contents, and it appears to be a valid PDF, just not one that his Mac (or mine) is willing to deal with.

Zipping when sending as an attachment may well do the trick - but the problem is that there's no consistency as to the source of the file. PDFs from various sources become "damaged". So I suspect it's his MacBook Air, and possibly Thunderbird, causing the problem during reception.

Re Printing: Sorry, I somehow assumed your friend was creating the PDF - I read your post but it didn’t sink in...

But zipping may help.

I’ve read reports that earlier versions of Adobe Reader are more tolerant when it comes to pdf files created by non-Adobe programs, perhaps trying Reader 6..

Have you tried opening the file in Illustrator or Photoshop?

I have received files which used a strange (usually “cute/free download” Windows) font - but did not have the font embedded,
they sometimes ( once in a blue moon) open in Photoshop

Does this happen with Safari?