Failed to Open PDF Error? Show Options to Fix it.
One of InDesign’s great little capabilities is that it’s so simple to just place a PDF file. But like everything else in life, it’s just not perfect.
Once in a while an error alert will pop up saying “Failed to Open the PDF” That’s hardly a very specific or helpful error especially since you’re not trying to open the PDF, just place it in your document.
I’ve seen this myself and have found the fix to be anything from restarting InDesign to resaving the PDF in Acrobat.
But it seems there’s a simpler solution. As pointed out by User to User forum contributor Scott Falkner, just select the Show Import Options choice in the place dialog (or alternatively, hold the shift key down when placing the file).
Select Show Import Options
Why does this work? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just enough to jog InDesign’s internal thought processes, but it does work.
Give it a try if you ever get this error.
This error has actually been around since at least IDCS2.
Not sure if its ever going to get fixed at this point.
Yes! Yes! Yes! So obvious, and yet totally non-intuitive. I have had a rash of these kinds of files from people (mostly PDF files from Photoshop) and I’ve just been re-opening and saving as a different file format. This fix is far better, and — just tried it — it works great! Thanks, Bob.
I think this happens if someone has recently used the feature to change the cropping on a placed PDF, and the newly placed file doesn’t have the same cropping data. Say I place a PDF and tell InDesign to crop it to Bleed. That sets the default to Bleed. If I then place a PDF without a Bleed setting normally, InDesign balks because the default cannot be used with that file.
I’d call it a bug.
This brings back the Place dialog box to the discussion.
Maybe I had never found this problem, just because I have trained myself (and others) to nearly always check the Show Import Options box (or hold the Shift key when opening a file ) and uncheck the Replace Selected Item checkbox.
Exactly the opposite of the default settings!
The second setting is more optional, as sometimes you wish to replace at once, though it’s somewhat less common, as I use to place graphics into empty frames or at no frames at all.
But the first setting unless you know exactly what’s going on helps to show e.g. the options when placing MSWord/RTF text files or the optional content (layers) in PSD or PDF files or just the ICC profiles of images.
If I could have it turned on by default….
This doesnt’ always work though, sorry.
I’ve had this recently where everything was fine with the PDF printwise. But I couldn’t place it.
I went through each page (luckily it was a small pdf) and placed them individually until I found the culprit.
After several attempts and ideas I finally resaved that page as a .ps in Acrobat and redistilled it and added it back to the PDF.
Then when I placed the PDF it worked fine, show options didn’t work, and the page I was placing was nowhere near the page that caused the problem.
Weird.