Repair a Corrupted PDF That Won't Open

Fix a damaged or corrupted PDF that won't open by rebuilding its structure, and see what was wrong and what was recovered. The repair runs in your browser, so the file isn't uploaded, and there's no size limit.

How to use Repair PDF

Choose a damaged PDF.
Wait while it's rebuilt; several repair methods are tried in turn.
Read the result: Repaired, No damage found, Partly recovered or Recovered as images, with what was fixed.
Download the repaired PDF.

Frequently asked questions

How do I fix a PDF that won't open?

Open it here. The tool first rebuilds the file with qpdf, then tries reading its objects one by one, then cuts a truncated file back to its last complete part, and as a last resort redraws every readable page into a new PDF.

What does "The file is damaged and could not be repaired" mean?

Your PDF reader couldn't find or follow the file's index of objects (the cross-reference table), often because the file was cut short or altered. Rebuilding that index from the objects themselves, as this tool does, often makes it open again.

Why do PDFs get corrupted?

Common causes are a download or email attachment that didn't finish, a copy to a USB drive that was removed too early, an app that crashed while saving, or a tool that wrote the file incorrectly.

Can every corrupted PDF be repaired?

Not always. If parts of the file are missing, only the readable pages can be recovered, and the result tells you how many pages came back. If no page can be read, the file can't be recovered.

What does Recovered as images mean?

The pages could only be saved as pictures, so they look right but their text can't be selected. Run OCR PDF on the result to make it searchable again.

Is my damaged PDF uploaded?

No. The repair runs in your browser.

What each result means

If the original was cut short during a download, downloading it again is often the quickest fix. Once the file opens, you can compress the repaired PDF or save pages as images.

Result	What happened
Repaired	The structure was rebuilt; all content that was in the file is kept
No damage found	The file was checked and rewritten cleanly; if it still won't open, the problem is likely in the reader
Partly recovered	The file was cut off; everything up to the last complete object was saved, the rest is lost
Recovered as images	The readable pages were saved as pictures; text isn't selectable until you run OCR

All tools

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JSON Viewer: Paste JSON to validate, format, minify and explore it as a collapsible tree.
CSS Formatter: Beautify messy CSS or minify it for production. Handles nesting, @media and comments.
Developer Utilities: JWT decoder, Base64/URL/HTML encoder, hashes, UUID/ULID and password generators, timestamp converter, cron explainer and what's my IP.
PDF Tools: Edit and sign, merge, split, compress, convert (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG), OCR, protect, unlock, redact and compare PDFs. Files stay on your device.
- Edit PDF: Edit existing text, find & replace, sign, highlight, shapes, stamps, links and fillable forms.
- Sign PDF: Draw, type or upload your signature and place it on any page. Saved for next time, on this device only.
- Fill PDF Form: Type into a PDF's fillable fields, tick boxes and pick options, then save it filled in, or locked.
- Add Page Numbers: Number pages at the top or bottom, left, centre or right, with your format, font, size and starting number.
- Add Watermark: Stamp text or an image over pages: position, angle, opacity, tiled or single.
- Crop PDF: Trim margins or crop to an area you draw, on one page, chosen pages or all of them.
- Merge PDF: Combine PDFs in the order you want, optionally picking pages from each.
- Split PDF: Split by page ranges, every N pages, or into single pages. Download as one zip.
- Remove Pages: Click the pages you don't want and download the rest.
- Extract Pages: Pick pages and save them as a new PDF, together or one file each.
- Organize PDF: Drag pages into order, rotate, duplicate, delete, insert blank pages or add another PDF.
- Rotate PDF: Turn every page, or just the ones you pick, by 90° or 180°.
- Scan to PDF: Photograph documents with your camera, clean them up and save them as one PDF.
- Compress PDF: Shrink PDFs by recompressing images and restructuring the file, and see the new size before you download.
- Compress PDF to 100KB: Get a PDF under 100 KB for strict upload forms. Keeps text selectable when it can, and shows the exact size.
- Compress PDF to 200KB: Shrink a scanned certificate or form to under 200 KB, at the best quality that fits.
- Compress PDF to 500KB: Bring a multi-page PDF under 500 KB, re-saving photos first and turning pages into images only if needed.
- Compress PDF to 1MB: Get a PDF under 1 MB for uploads and email, usually with its text still selectable.
- Repair PDF: Rebuild a damaged or malformed PDF and recover the pages that can still be read.
- OCR PDF: Make scanned PDFs searchable and selectable by recognising their text, in 11 languages including Hindi.
- JPG to PDF: Turn JPG, PNG and other images into a PDF: page size, orientation and margins.
- PDF to JPG: Save every page as a JPG or PNG, or pull out the images inside the PDF.
- PDF to Word: Convert to an editable .docx with paragraphs, headings, bold and italic.
- PDF to Excel: Pull tables out of a PDF into an .xlsx spreadsheet, one sheet per page or all in one.
- PDF to PowerPoint: Turn each page into a slide in a .pptx presentation.
- PDF to Markdown: Convert a PDF's text to Markdown with headings, lists and links.
- Protect PDF: Encrypt a PDF with a password (AES-256) and choose what readers may do.
- Unlock PDF: Remove the password and restrictions from a PDF you can open.
- Redact PDF: Permanently black out text and areas. Redacted pages are flattened so nothing survives.
- Compare PDF: See what changed between two versions, page by page, with differences highlighted.
Image Tools: Compress, resize, crop and convert (HEIC to JPG, WebP, AVIF, Base64). Optimise and render SVGs. Generate QR codes, favicons and OG images.
Text Tools: Count words and characters (Hindi too) against a character limit, and convert text to UPPER, Title, camelCase, snake_case and more.
Calculators: Age on any date, percentages, GST and marks, and a unit converter with sq ft, gaj, acre, guntha and KB vs KiB.
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