Inmates Shelter Posted February 5 Posted February 5 Hello from Austria! We are looking for an alternative to InDesign and just installed Publisher 2. Looks nice and it seems to have all the features we need. However, as soon as we try to import a PDF document, we get the error message "File type not supported". No matter which PDF it is. With or without grapics. With or without embedded fonts. We are a NGO with a lot of clients from prisons. We have to scan the entire communication with our clients and the PDFs are mainly coming from the "HP Smart" app. However, even if we just write "Hello world" into Word and print it to a PDF (with Adobe and MS PD writer), we have the same error message in Publisher 2. Any ideas? Thanks. Quote
Hangman Posted February 5 Posted February 5 Hi @Inmates Shelter and welcome to the forums, I appreciate you may not be able to upload one of the scanned PDF files if it contains personally identifiable information but could you scan something, anything as you normally do and upload a sample file along with a sample Hello World file created in Word and then converted to PDF so we can take a look at what the problem might be... Old Bruce 1 Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.3125 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse
Inmates Shelter Posted February 8 Author Posted February 8 Sorry for the late reply. It seems that the import from Word ("Hello world") is now working. The problem is obviously due to the PDF version that HP Smart creates, which Publisher cannot import. Attached is a PDF file from HP Smart. There is of course a workaround. When we open the PDF in a simple PDF Editor / Viewer, and save it again, then the PDF can be imported to Publisher. Probably the PDF format from HP Smart is so very special. The problem, I mentioned before about the Word document ("Hello world") did only occur when using the HP Smart driver. If we deactivate it and use only a simple PDF Writer alone, the problem wont occur. test.pdf Quote
kenmcd Posted February 8 Posted February 8 2 hours ago, Inmates Shelter said: Attached is a PDF file from HP Smart. PDF-XChange Editor found problems with that PDF. PDF Desktop Repair Tool listed the structural issues it found with that PDF. So the error message in APub is just not very helpful (not correct). Appears HP Smart is creating bad PDFs that APub is unable to work-around. Note: just viewing a PDF is easier for applications than editing a PDF. Quote
Hangman Posted February 9 Posted February 9 Hi @Inmates Shelter, Many thanks for the file... Just to add to @kenmcd's post above, this same issue has come up before with scanned PDFs from the HP Smart app... With your test file, the error is at offset 155228... Root object (5 0 obj) not found at offset 155228 As per the linked post, looking at the PDF in a Hex editor shows the Root object at offset 155228 as (4 0 obj) and subsequently the Affinity apps fail to parse the file... The linked post mentions that the issue was going to be logged with the developers, but it doesn't show a bug reference, so I'm unsure what reference it is logged under... Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.3125 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse
Inmates Shelter Posted February 9 Author Posted February 9 Well, we are using the "workaround" by opening it with PDF XChange Viewer and then simply save it again. This corrects the problem. But, we have about 1000 clients or prisoners who we take care of in Austria. For every prisoner, we have 10 - 15 pages. If we would have to open/save all of these documents, it would take us a while. Quote
Hangman Posted February 9 Posted February 9 Hi @Inmates Shelter, Could you upload a screenshot showing the scan settings you're using in the HP Smart app... Quote Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 Affinity Designer Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.6.0.3125 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.6.0.3125 MacBook Pro M3 Max, 36 GB Unified Memory, macOS Sonoma 14.6.1, Magic Mouse HP ENVY x360, 8 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, Windows 10 Home, Logitech Mouse
Inmates Shelter Posted February 9 Author Posted February 9 It's not possible to edit the PDf settings in HP Smart. You just can select the file type (PDF, Word, PNG, etc.), but you can't edit the settings. Quote
Oufti Posted February 9 Posted February 9 Since it's a scan (bitmap image), you don't need to embed it in a complex format as PDF. Have you tried to save your scans as PNG or TIFF? Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue.
Inmates Shelter Posted February 9 Author Posted February 9 We have to use PDF, because when communicating with prisons and the ministry of justice, we have to digitally sign our documents. This wont work with simple graphic files. Oufti 1 Quote
AiDon Posted February 9 Posted February 9 You may also want to go to the HP Smart website and look for support there ... HP Smart Quote Both PC’s Win 11 x64 System PC1 ASUS ROG Strix - AMD Ryzen 9 6900X CPU @ 3.3GHz. 32GB RAM - GPU 1: AMD Radeon integrated. GPU 2: NVIDIA RTX 3060, 6GB PC2 ASUS ProArt PZ13 - Snapdragon X Plus X1P42100 (8 CPUs), 16GB RAM - Neural Processor - Qualcomm® Hexagon™ NPU up to 45TOPS - GPU 1: Qualcomm Adreno Graphics,
kenmcd Posted February 10 Posted February 10 14 hours ago, Inmates Shelter said: Well, we are using the "workaround" by opening it with PDF XChange Viewer and then simply save it again. This corrects the problem. But, we have about 1000 clients or prisoners who we take care of in Austria. For every prisoner, we have 10 - 15 pages. If we would have to open/save all of these documents, it would take us a while. PDF-XChange's PDF-Tools can be run in batch mode. Perhaps you could run one of the scanner-fix tools on all the files, and that would re-save the files all at once. https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools Quote
Inmates Shelter Posted February 10 Author Posted February 10 Thanks for all the answers and suggestions. We probably will go with the batch mode, which we were already discussing in our team before. The HP support blames Affinity and dont want to do anything. We had the same problems with the HP support with InDesign. Because InDesign wont print on a HP OfficeJet 8x series (only blank pages). Adobe blames HP, HP blames Adobe, ... as that we didn't want to pay a monthly subscription for an app which is limited in functionality, we decided to change to Affinity. I dont know how long the batch process will run for about 15000 PDF documents... but lets see... 😀 kenmcd 1 Quote
kenmcd Posted February 10 Posted February 10 Those HP Not-so-Smart PDFs are definitely an issue. I did open your sample PDF in a couple other PDF editors. One popped-up a dialog suggesting OCR and seemed to lock-up. The other PDF Editor also offered OCR and then crashed. If you are stuck with the HP hardware scanner, check-out VueScan. Works with just about any scanner hardware. It can scan to PDF. Perhaps you can stop creating the bad PDFs to finally solve the issue permanently. Quote
Inmates Shelter Posted February 10 Author Posted February 10 Yes, Vuescan is an alternative to HP Smart. I will suggest it to our financial bosses. Oufti and kenmcd 2 Quote
David in Яuislip Posted February 10 Posted February 10 10 hours ago, Inmates Shelter said: I dont know how long the batch process will run for about 15000 PDF documents... but lets see Using pdftk and the attached bat file on a random 108 pdfs totalling 189 MB took just over 30s so 15000 would take an hour or so The bat file is quick and dirty and will process pdfs in the folder where it's placed and also sub-folders so it depends upon your file structure as to how this can be used Snag is that pdftk cannot overwrite files so the output file needs a suffix, the original is then deleted and the new file renamed without the suffix Available at www.pdftk.com, install the pdftk server version, it's command line and very quick, good luck PdfRepair.bat Quote Microsoft Windows 11 Home, Intel i7-1360P 2.20 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Intel Iris Xe Affinity Photo - 24/05/20, Affinity Publisher - 06/12/20, KTM Superduke - 27/09/10
Inmates Shelter Posted February 10 Author Posted February 10 Thanks for all the suggestions and help. The batch file is a great way for the PDFs we already have and the new app for our future scans. Quote
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