Writer is unable to open exported pdf documents (Windows / 25.2.3.2 x86)

[john_corn]

Hello, new user here. I paid attention that some pdf documents can’t be opened in writer, some can.

This regards pdfs exported from Writer too.

We get General input/output error. Some of the documents open in LO Draw though I opened them from Writer’s File menu.

I was able to reproduce the error with writer created pdf, password protected: 123, though past documents without passwords were affected too (I don’t want to publish them here):

test.pdf (22.0 KB)

Version: 25.2.3.2 (x86) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: bbb074479178df812d175f709636b368952c2ce3
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

[ajlittoz]

A PDF will never open in Writer. Even if you use File>Open… from Writer, internally LO routes processing to Draw because it considers PDFs as graphics files (a collection of shapes without structure).

A quick analysis shows your file to be a hybrid PDF containing both a PDF version of the document and an ODF container for the document itself.

Line 1 is %PDF-1.7
Line 2 starts with % but is followed by gibberish as if there were some confusion between Unicode and ISO-8859-x. This is probably the cause of the I/O error: Draw can’t decode this string.

[john_corn]

You’re right, is there any bug report on this? I accidentally thought it was the same window.

[fpy]

@ajlittoz

never

Bulk convert PDF to .doc

@ajlittoz missed the link below ??

[Lupp]

Just an add-on:

• Did you (@john_corn) read LibreOffice Writer will not open PDF documents (e.g.) or one of the many similar threads?
• Your example asks for a password when an attempt is made to open it with a pdf reader.
• The image you pasted may have some 100 KiByte. The contained information is 42 Byte.

[EarnestAl]

If I open your test file in 25.8 I get the I/O error

If I open your test file in 7.6.7.2 it opens a single blank page in Draw overlaid with the line This PDF file is encrypted and can’t be opened.

Worth reporting a bug, at least for lack of graceful fail, How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki

[fpy]

@EarnestAl

reporting

158537 – Encrypted hybrid PDFs are opened as regular PDFs with Draw, with no option to enter password

[EarnestAl]

Not exactly the same; it doesn’t open at all but instead has General I/O error in 24.8 and later

[fpy]

@EarnestAl

Not exactly

yep, always a debate : 165588 – Writer embed ODF file signed with Adobe Acrobat can't be opened in Writer again/Hybrid encrypted PDFv2