PDF XChange Forum

Hi there,

I am a free user of the pdf xchange editor and I'd like to commend you on the awesome product you have.

I have been using this version for a few months now and have used it to primarily make notes when I'm studying using comments and bookmarks.

However, earlier today I haven't been able to open the file or get it to work as I get an xref error and the writing becomes unintelligible. How can I fix this or how can i recover a previous version of this file as it contains months of note taking.

Thank you

Kind Regards.

Hello, adamszeq

Thank you for the kind words, it is always nice to receive a commendation in the morning! May I ask what applications have opened and modified this file in the past? Nothing we offer would be able to cause this level of damage. Identifying what else was used will be key to prevent this from happening to your other files in the future.

You also mention an Xref error, but in the current release, the file seem to forcibly closes itself, before we can even attempt to do the same as Adobe and Foxit (Show a blank page and an error message that the file is irreparably damaged). Are you running an older build of our software? If you are, please let me know the build number shown under "help > about", so we can take a look there.

In this case, I am afraid that it is not likely to be possible to recover previous data, none of that is stored in the file, so there is no backup information for us to work with. If you have a previous copy of the file, you may be able to get things working from a semi-recent time, but I am afraid nothing I can offer here will help.

As before, figuring out what app caused this damage in the first place will be an important step to take, so you can avoid using it in the future. I note in the document properties, these were created by InDesign for Mac, and a producer I have never heard of before ("3-Heights").

• Mac does not play with with the PDF format, and most applications which support it are severely limited, or unfortunately cut corners that may lead to damage. Adobe's own InDesign is no exception to this. For that reason, Creation and Editing PDF's on a mac is not advisable in most situations.
• The name "3-heights security shell" Implies to me that perhaps some form of third party security could have been put in place. If an unsupported security format is used, normally it would merely prevent the file from opening, but depending on the extend of changes that are made (And how well the app understand the PDF Specification) Garbled text content like we see here, could also be an outcome.

The biggest issue with PDF corruption like you see here is that more often than not, the original cause was dozens of edits prior, and the issue only came to light because of a change that was made recently. Usually where an app used the data located in the correct default location, but that original data, that has been untouched for a long while, was not formatted properly, leading this change to cause a chain reaction of sorts.

Kind regards,

Hi Dan,

Thank you for getting back to me.

Initially the original file was used in adobe on windows (not sure why iots saying mac, maybe the original downloaded file was created with mac) but after a discovering your app, i completely switched to it. I have no idea why its not the best on the market.

Indeed , i make a lot of changes daily, I add comments, paste pictures delete as i study on so maybe that might be the cause but it was working perfectly before that. I have resorted to run an automatic code that resaves the current pdf im using every morning so that I'll always have a day lag backupbecause i cant see myself going back to any other pd service.

Yes i used to see an xref error when the damage started and i turned the error message off as i thought it will fix it but im sure youll see it once you have it turned on.

Kindly let me know if you need any other info.

Hello, adamszeq

If you happen to have an older copy of the file anywhere, it would be beneficial to see that for comparison, but as I mentioned before, the current version of the file immediately closes itself before we can even see an xref error or any other related messages. So there is not much to be gleamed in that area. We have passed this up to the Dev team for further investigation, but I am uncertain if anything can be done to recover this file today.

In the future, if you see any error messages in our software, and saving/closing/reopening the file does not dismiss the issue, it indicates there is already irreparable damage to the file (for this reason, It is generally best not to disable any of the error messages we show). At that point it is a good idea to think about what recent changes were made to it, or save a duplicate copy incase something like this happens again.

Kind regards,