[Techtalk] Unreadable(?) pdf files

[Carla Schroder]

Have you tried opening them in LibreOffice? LO imports and exports PDFs.

Carla

On Fri, 11 Mar 2016 12:31:58 +0000
David Sumbler <david at aeolia.co.uk> wrote:

> I have a rather old CD-R with a number of pdf files on it.
> 
> When I try to open any of these files with Adobe Acrobat 9, evince
> v.3.4.0 or Gimp v.2.6.12 I see what seems to be the appropriate number
> of pages, but all of them are blank.
> 
> If I open them with emacs, there is clearly a lot of data there.  In
> emacs, one of these files (chosen arbitrarily) begins like this:
> 
> %PDF-1.2
> %âãÏÓ
> 4 0 obj
> <<
> /Type /Page
> /Parent 2 0 R
> /Contents 5 0 R
> /MediaBox [0 0 596 842]
> /Resources <<
> /ProcSet [/PDF]
> /XObject << /PS6 6 0 R >>
> >>
> /Annots [7 0 R ]
> >>
> endobj
A
> /Length 60
> >>
> stream
> \200^LE\303^H$^P at 0\201\301F^PxL^TA^B\205B\341^P\250dP\306m
> 
> and so on for 100s of lines.
> 
> I have searched for ways of converting old pdf files to later
> versions, but (a) I haven't managed to find any, and (b) several
> sites suggest that Acrobat, at least, ought to be able to read files
> from earlier versions without conversion.
> 
> Can somebody think of a way of rescuing these files and converting
> them to something usable?
> 
> David
> 
> 
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