How to repair a damaged PDF
- Choose the PDF that will not open, opens blank, or shows an error.
- Press Repair PDF. The file is checked, its structure is rebuilt, and the result is tested by drawing every page.
- Read the report: pages before and after, and what was wrong.
- Download the repaired copy. Your original is never changed.
If the report says the file is healthy, the problem is probably the app you used to open it. Try another viewer. Need to shrink the repaired file? UseCompress PDF.
Questions
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Repair runs inside this browser tab. Your damaged file is never sent to a server.
What kind of damage can be fixed?
Broken or missing cross-reference tables, a missing trailer, wrong stream lengths, and files cut off by an interrupted download or email. These are the most common reasons a PDF will not open.
Can every PDF be recovered?
No. If the page data itself is destroyed, or the file is not a PDF, nothing can be rebuilt. The tool tells you how many pages it recovered and which ones could not be drawn.
What does "Rebuild pages as pictures" do?
When the structure cannot be fixed but the pages can still be drawn, this draws each page and saves it as an image in a new PDF. It rescues the look of the pages, but the text is no longer selectable.
Can it fix a password-protected PDF?
It cannot open a file that needs a password. Remove the password with Protect & Unlock PDF first, then repair the result.
Credits
Built on qpdf (WebAssembly build) (Apache-2.0), pdf-lib (MIT) and PDF.js (Apache-2.0). OneTooling is not affiliated with these projects.