Repair a damaged PDF
To repair a damaged PDF, open it in Edit PDF and press Repair. CECO PDF rebuilds its index, mends content cut short, opens the result again and draws every page, and lists anything it could not recover. It refuses a file that is sound, and one damaged past reading.
Repair a PDF now — it opens Edit PDF, with nothing to install; press “Repair” above the page.
- What it does: rebuilds a PDF whose cross-reference table, its index of where everything is, points at the wrong bytes, whose end is missing, or whose content stops part of the way through, into a file that opens cleanly.
- What it says: the problems it found; the pages, images, attachments, bookmarks and form fields it recovered; and each part it could not, with the bytes missing where the file says how many there were. Nothing is dropped in silence.
- The price: repairing takes nothing from the free plan’s day. Downloading costs nothing when the files you started from have no corrections made here. A file made from a corrected document is priced as one.
The PDF you open is kept with your documents, and deleted after 90 days or whenever you delete it; the file as it arrived is kept beside the repaired copy. The privacy notice says what is kept, and why.
How do I repair a PDF?
- Open Edit PDF and choose the damaged PDF. A file the reader can still make sense of is taken, even with its index broken. If the file says its cross-reference table had to be rebuilt to open it, the page says so and offers “Repair the file”.
- Otherwise press “Repair” in the toolbar.
- Read the “Repair report”: what was found, how many pages were recovered, and what could not be, or “Nothing was lost.”
- Check the pages, then download the repaired copy. The file as it arrived is kept, and the repair can be undone.
What can a repair fix?
- A download that stopped, or a copy cut short. The index and the end of the file are rebuilt from what is there, and every page that can be read is kept.
- An index that points at the wrong bytes, so a reader cannot find the pages it lists. The file is scanned for its objects and the table written anew.
- Content that stops part of the way through a page. What can be read of it is written back, closed properly so the page can be drawn, and listed as lost: what came after the damage is gone.
What a repair cannot do is bring back bytes the file no longer has. A page, a font or an image that is missing is named in the report, never redrawn from a guess, and nothing that survived the damage is taken away.
What if the PDF is not damaged at all?
Then there is nothing to repair, and it says so: “This file opened cleanly, so there was nothing to repair.” A PDF that opens but shows a wrong word needs a correction, not a repair: Edit PDF text changes it in the document’s own font. One that opens but will not print may be damaged, which a repair finds, or restricted by the person who made it, which is not damage: Unlock PDF removes a restriction from your own file, with its password.
What you can and cannot do here
| What you want to do | Here |
|---|---|
| Rebuild a broken index, or a file whose end is missing | Yes |
| Mend a page whose content stops part of the way through | Yes, up to where the damage starts; what came after is listed as lost |
| Bring back bytes the file no longer holds | No: what is gone is listed, never invented |
| See exactly what was found and what was lost | Yes, in the “Repair report” |
| Keep the file as it arrived | Yes: the repair is a step you can take back |
| Repair a file that is not a PDF, or one with no page left to read | No: it is refused when it is uploaded |
| Repair a sound file | No: there is nothing to repair, and it says so |
| Fix a wrong word in a PDF that opens | Not here: Edit PDF text does that |
Questions people ask
Can I repair a PDF for free?
Repairing takes nothing from the free plan’s day. Downloading costs nothing when the files you started from have no corrections made here. A file made from a corrected document is priced as one. What a download costs otherwise is on the pricing page.
Can I fix a PDF that will not open?
When the damage is to its index or its end, yes: the pages are still in the file, and a repair rebuilds what leads to them. One damaged past reading, with no page left to find, is refused when it is uploaded: fetch it again from where it came from, if you can.
Why can’t my PDF be repaired?
Because it is not a PDF, such as another kind of file with a name ending in .pdf; because it is empty; or because nothing in it can be read as a page. If it came from a download or an email, the copy you have may have stopped short, and fetching it again is often the quicker cure.
Will a repair change my PDF?
Only where the damage is: the index is written anew and content cut short is closed. The file as it arrived is kept, and repairing the same damaged file again gives the same repaired file.
Is the repaired PDF checked?
Yes. It is opened again and every page drawn, and anything the reader still reports about it is listed in the record, which says whether the file now opens cleanly.
Can I fix a PDF that will not print?
If it is damaged, a repair finds and mends what it can. If its maker restricted printing, it is not damaged: Unlock PDF removes the restriction from your own file with its password.
Does it repair Word or Excel files?
No: only PDFs. To make a PDF of a Word document, use Word to PDF.
Related pages
- Edit PDF, for everything else Edit PDF lays over a page
- Edit PDF text, to change a wrong word in a PDF that opens
- Unlock PDF, to remove a password you know
- Compress PDF, to make the repaired copy smaller to send
- Crop PDF, to trim the pages of a sound file
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