[superdan54]

Hi,

I've scoured the internet for a solution to this but to no avail .

OK so the problem is that whenever we attach small ( < 50K) PDF's to an email message (using Outlook usually), the recipient will receive the following error message when they try and open the attached PDF: "There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired." We are pretty sure that this is a XP SP2 issue, as we were able to send & open documents on a PC w/out SP2, but after updating to SP2, the same PC would not open the PDF. Is there a fix to this, or could it be something separate entirely?

It would seem that something this major would have an obvious solution, but I can't find anything. Thanks for your help ahead of time!

Edited by superdan54, 11 April 2006 - 09:24 AM.

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have you tried updating your adobe software?

[dsenette]

have you tried updating your adobe software?

[superdan54]

Yeah my Adobe software is up to date. One thing I did notice is that the file size shrunk after the message was sent. Before sending, the PDF was 12K, and after receiving it is now 10K.

Edited by superdan54, 11 April 2006 - 10:52 AM.

[dsenette]

do you have the ability to put the file onto a disk...then open it on the other machine? to see if it's the email program screwing it up or if it get's corrupted by windows itself

[superdan54]

do you have the ability to put the file onto a disk

I'm assuming you are talking about the original file and not the corrupted. If so, we can put it on a flash drive and transport it that way no problem.

...to see if it's the email program screwing it up or if it get's corrupted by windows itself

From what we've seen, the culprit doesn't seem to be solely our MDaemon mail client or solely Windows XP, but a combination of the two. We can send larger PDF's (anything over 100K) without any problem. We can also send small PDF's to any machine that doesn't have XP Service Pack 2. But as mentioned before we can share them over the network or transport them via disk to any XP SP2 machine.

Thanks for your help!

Edited by superdan54, 11 April 2006 - 11:05 AM.

[dsenette]

have you gotten all the current updates for xp? not just sp2?

[dsenette]

also....within outlook try going to help then detect and repair...see if that helps...also on a test machine try getting mozilla thunderbird and see if the pdf's go through with that...

[superdan54]

Ok well after talking to one of my co-workers, I found out that the corruption is caused by the host computer, not the recipient's. And the PDF is only corrupted when using Outlook. For example, I can send the PDF to myself using Hotmail, and open it in my Outlook account just fine. However, if I try to send the PDF to myself using Outlook, it will corrupt the file. (However only if the PDF is really small.)

I compared the corrupted & original PDF's in notepad, and the only difference is that the corrupted PDF has the 2 bottom lines (binary data & footer information) removed from the file.

My Office 2003 suite is at SP1, but there may be other updates. However, none of the updates I saw corrected anything remotely close to this.

So while this information certainly narrows it down more, I still haven't found a solution.

Edited by superdan54, 11 April 2006 - 01:54 PM.

[dsenette]

have you tried reinstalling outlook?

[superdan54]

No, but this would not be practical for us as this problem affects every user (100+) using XP SP2 + Outlook 2003. I'm sure that its just a bug that needs to be patched.

[dsenette]

ok so i can keep up

EVERY machine with xp SP2 corrupts small pdfs...(sending to either sp2 or sp1 machines) when sent through Outlook correct?

we need to just focus on one machine and not the entire shop as throwing sollutions out just because of the size of the job will limit the choices..

make sure that you have a machine that is FULLY updated (both office updates and microsoft updates) and try a test mail and check for corruption

on that machine do the detect and repair within outlook's help menu
any better?

uninstall/reinstall outlook
any better?

uninstall reinstall the adobe software (acrobat not any form of pdf authoring program as that isn't the point of corruption....there may be something within acrobat messing with the file when attatching in outlook)