How to repair corrupted PDF file free online?

Being a computer user, you must be familiar with a huge variety of files. One such file is PDF (portable document format), and it’s quite popular among computer users. Developed by Adobe Systems in the 90s, this format has so many features. On the other hand, it has a major drawback. Just like any other computer file, PDF files are also highly prone to corruption. A PDF file can become corrupted at any time due to any reason. Through this article, I’ll help you learn how to repair PDF file so that you can recover your content from it.

Portable Document Format

In the early 90s when there was no portable document format, the documents sharing task between different computers and operating systems wasn’t easy for users. They actually needed a file format to maintain the fixed formatting. So the idea to create PDF file came up. It was initially released on 15th June 1993 by Adobe Systems. And since then, the portable document format has become one of the most popular file formats in the world.

In these days, the portable document format is commonly used for product manuals, eBooks, resumes, job applications, scanned documents, flyers (pamphlet), and all sorts of other documents. A PDF file doesn’t require any specific operating system or hardware. Even it doesn’t rely on the software that actually creates it, i.e. Adobe Acrobat. So whatever device you’re using to open a PDF file, it just looks same everywhere. Apart from texts and images, you can add interactive buttons, hyperlinks, embedded fonts, videos, and much more.

Though the technology is moving quickly, the PDF file is probably here to stay for a long. The portable document format has so much history behind it. And it’s so widespread as well.

Benefits of PDF File

There are various benefits of PDF file. Below I’m showing you the top 6 benefits of PDF file:

• Maintain the Original Formatting: Unlike Word documents and other files, the PDF file is very good in maintaining the original formatting. This means if you print the document, it’ll appear exactly same how it was created on your system.
• Ubiquitous Format: This is the only file format which is widely adopted all around the world. The portable document format is easy to view and share. So if you want to share documents with someone near you or far away, PDF is the best choice.
• Small/Compressed in Size: The portable document format can successfully compress the high-quality files to relatively small in size. This will surely save your hard disk space, especially if you’re working with the limited storage resources. File Protection: The best part of this file format is protection. You can password-protect PDF file so that you can secure your crucial business documents. Also, you can apply various security parameters to protect PDF file.
• OS friendly: This file format is OS friendly which means you can view the PDF file on any operating system like Windows, Mac, and Linux. Even you can easily view or open a PDF file on a mobile device that has iOS and Android operating systems.
• Support Non-text Elements: In a PDF file, you can add non-text elements to make the layouts awesome. Also, you can rightly use the links which will open up in the web browser while you’re viewing the documents on a computer or mobile device.

Corruption – A Major Drawback

We’ve seen a few common benefits of PDF file above. But do you know that the portable document format has a major drawback? Just like any other computer file, a PDF file is also prone to corruption. And whenever a PDF file becomes corrupted due to any reason, you can’t open it. You must repair PDF file in time, otherwise, you may lose your data. Generally, when you try to open a corrupt PDF file, you receive an error message. Here’s the list of the most common error messages you may encounter:

• “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired.”
• “Acrobat could not open xyz.pdf because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged.”
• “There was an error opening this document. Access denied.”
• “An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person who created the PDF document to correct the problem.” 
• “There was an error opening this document. The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.”
• “An error occurred creating the PDF attachment. The selected file is empty and is not a valid PDF. Please select a different file.”

Most Common Reasons

Behind a corrupt PDF file, below reasons are highly responsible:

• Computer Virus: The most common reason behind file corruption is virus. Viruses can enter into a computer system, and infect the data and information stored in it. A PDF file is not immune to virus infection. It can corrupt the PDF file by modifying or deleting some part of the file.
• Bugs Attack: Almost every software program has internal bugs. And such internal bugs can cause serious issues like poor performance and corruption. Adobe Acrobat and/Adobe Reader may also have some internal bugs which can cause corrupt PDF file.
• Sudden System Shutdown: If the computer system shuts down abruptly due to sudden power failure, it may cause severe issues. This may put your computer and its data at high risk.
• Hard Disk Failure: Hard disk failure may occur due to various reasons, and it can cause some serious issues. File corruption is one of them.
• Software Malfunction: It refers to a situation when a software program starts producing an incorrect or unexpected result or behaving in unintended ways. The common reasons behind software malfunctions are software collision and internal bugs.

Use of Backup

If you can’t open a PDF file due to corruption, it’s better to restore it from the backup. So if you’ve taken the backup of your PDF files earlier, you can successfully restore the copies of your PDF files from the backup. Generally, a backup plays the role of a lifesaver at the time of data loss due to accidental deletion or corruption. And that’s why I always recommend taking backup regularly to avoid data loss. Unluckily, if you don’t have the backup, you must use 3rd party tool to repair PDF file.

How to Repair PDF File?

There’s no way to repair PDF file manually, even Adobe doesn’t provide anything to fix corrupt PDF file. In such a situation, you should consider using a 3rd party solution. There are many vendors in the online marketplace which provide PDF Recovery software, and SysInfoTools is one of them. The PDF Repair tool provided by SysInfoTools Software is one of the best solutions to repair PDF file without requiring any prior technical expertise. Via this software, you can successfully recover texts, text formatting, images, links, comments, bookmarks, document properties, cells, tables as well as the Unicode characters from the corrupt PDF file. It creates a new PST file and saves all the recovered data into it.

Below are the key features you’re getting in this PDF Recovery software:

• Batch recovery of multiple PDF files at a time
• Standard and Advanced recovery modes to handle a different level of corruption
• Smart preview of recoverable data prior to saving
• Advance search option to search PDF files in the system directory automatically
• Save extracted images as well as text in a separate folder
• Recovery of PDF files from external media like the floppy disk, DVD, CD, etc.

You can follow the steps given below to use the tool.

# Start by launching the PDF Recovery Tool.

#Select the recovery mode according to the level of corruption.

# The files will be scanned and preview will be shown.

# Now you can select the location where you wish to save the recoverd PDF files.

# Now Click on OK when the recovery process is complete.

You can also see the working of this tool here:

Availability

SysInfoTools provides the demo version of PDF Recovery software for free evaluation. So before purchasing the licensed version, you must download the free demo version. By using the demo version, you can successfully scan the corrupt PDF file and check the preview of your recoverable data prior to saving. And if you’re satisfied with the results, then only you should purchase the software.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve discussed the benefits of PDF file and the reasons which can make it corrupted. Also, we’ve seen the most common error messages which may occur at the time of corruption. And we learned how to repair PDF file by using a professional PDF Repair tool.

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