Repair PDF
Try to recover a corrupted or partially-truncated PDF that won't open in your reader.
Quick answer: Try to recover a corrupted or partially-truncated PDF that won't open in your reader.
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Frequently asked questions
- What does 'repair' actually do to a PDF?
- qpdf walks the file linearly, re-reads every PDF object it can find, then writes a new file with a fresh cross-reference table. This fixes the most common breakage causes: truncated downloads, broken xref offsets, and damaged stream headers.
- Will every PDF be repairable?
- No. If a file is missing object data — not just an index pointing to it — the content can't be reconstructed. As a rule of thumb: a PDF that opens partially in Adobe is usually fully recoverable; one that produces no preview at all is a coin flip.
- Will the repaired PDF look identical to the original?
- Visually yes, structurally close. Form fields and digital signatures may be re-numbered or lost; bookmarks and annotations are preserved when their object data is intact.
- Why does this run on a server?
- qpdf isn't shipped as WebAssembly today, and rebuilding a corrupted xref reliably needs full read/write file system access. We delete the file within 10 minutes and never log its content.
- Is there a file-size limit?
- Yes — 50 MB. Larger broken files are usually irrecoverable anyway because the missing region is too big a fraction of the document.