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Unable to send PDFs as email attachments

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I have become unable to send PDFs as email attachments when using Firefox.

Depending on the PDF, I either get the message “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired.” or it opens as a blank document. This occus when opening the file with both Adobe Reader and Acrobat Pro. The problem seems to be isolated to PDFs. (I am able to send Word files. If a PDF is zipped before attaching, it can be opened without problem.) This occurs on both an institutional email account and personal (Yahoo) email account. This problem is isolated to Firefox (does not happen in Chrome).

I have reset Firefox to default settings, as well as reinstalling.

Thank you.

I have become unable to send PDFs as email attachments when using Firefox. Depending on the PDF, I either get the message “There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired.” or it opens as a blank document. This occus when opening the file with both Adobe Reader and Acrobat Pro. The problem seems to be isolated to PDFs. (I am able to send Word files. If a PDF is zipped before attaching, it can be opened without problem.) This occurs on both an institutional email account and personal (Yahoo) email account. This problem is isolated to Firefox (does not happen in Chrome). I have reset Firefox to default settings, as well as reinstalling. Thank you.

All Replies (4)

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Update Adobe® Acrobat® Plug-in for Web Browsers, Version 10.1.13 to version 11.

Also please update all of your plugins and try again.

Does this happen when you open the pdf in pdf.js, it is possible to change the default viewer by:

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I did update the Adobe Acrobat Plug-in as suggested, but that did not fix the problem.

The problem is attaching PDFs, not viewing them. I became aware of this problem after receiving emails from people telling me that I was sending them blank PDFs. And if I use Chrome to send myself PDF attachments then receive them through Firefox, all is well.

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A previous person with a similar issue also fixed this by changing the security permissions of Adobe Reader: "padlock icon (but not always) I clicked on that then 'more information' then 'permissions' then changed adobe reader to 'allow' So now all attachments open. ' via: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../978520

Are you also using Adobe Acrobat as default to open all PDFs?

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Yes, I do use Adobe Acrobat by default to open PDFs.

As I said, I became aware of this problem when people told me I was emailing them PDFs that were blank or could not be opened. In order to narrow down the problem -- determining this is only Firefox (not Chrome), this happens only with PDFs (not other Word documents, and this happens from two different email accounts -- I have been emailing myself attachments to download and open.

The problem is not Firefox opening attachments. I have been trying to open the downloaded PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Reader, or Preview.

An example of a message from Acrobat Pro is "There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired." The same PDF sent from the same email account through Chrome and received using an account in Firefox opens without problem.