Repair PDF
Rebuild a damaged PDF and recover what’s readable. Processed on the server; your file is not stored.
Processed on our server and deleted immediately — your file is never stored.
About Repair PDF
Repair PDF rebuilds a damaged file's internal structure to recover as much of its content as possible. If a document refuses to open, reports itself as corrupt, or displays only some of its pages, this is worth trying before you give up on it. Free, and your upload is deleted straight after processing.
A PDF is not one continuous blob — it is a set of objects plus an index at the end telling readers where each object lives. Damage that index and the whole file appears unreadable even though nearly all the actual content is still sitting there intact. That is why so many corrupt PDFs are recoverable: usually the pages survive and only the map to them is broken.
The damage typically happens in transit rather than inside the document. A download that stopped at 90%, a USB drive pulled out mid-copy, an email gateway that mangled the attachment, a sync client that uploaded a half-written file, or a program that crashed while saving. Repair works by scanning the file for surviving objects and constructing a fresh index around whatever it finds, then writing out a clean document.
How to Repair PDF
- Upload the PDF that will not open properly.
- Wait while the file is scanned for recoverable objects and a new index is built.
- Download the rebuilt document.
- Open it and check every page, not just the first one.
- If pages are missing, try to obtain a fresh copy of the original before relying on the repaired version.
Tips & common problems
Check the file size first
If the broken file is far smaller than you expect — a few kilobytes for what should be a long report — the download was truncated and most of the content simply is not there. No repair tool can recover data that never arrived.
Always re-download before repairing
A second download often produces a perfectly good file, because the problem was the transfer rather than the document. It takes a minute and beats working from a partial recovery.
Verify every page
Repair recovers what it can find, which is occasionally most of a document rather than all of it. Scroll the whole file before you send it on or delete the broken original.
Encrypted files must be unlocked first
A password-protected PDF cannot be examined until it is decrypted, so run it through Unlock PDF before attempting a repair.
Frequently asked questions
Can a corrupted PDF be fixed?
Often, yes. Because most corruption damages the index rather than the content, rebuilding that index recovers the pages. Files that were truncated during download are the main exception, since the missing bytes genuinely do not exist.
Is it free?
Yes, with no signup, no watermark, and your file is not stored after processing.
Will I get everything back?
Not always. You will get whatever survived in the file. Minor structural damage usually recovers completely, while a badly truncated file may only yield its first pages.
Why does my PDF say it is damaged when it opens fine elsewhere?
Readers vary in how strictly they parse the format. Chrome is forgiving where Acrobat is strict, so a slightly malformed file can work in one and fail in the other. Repairing produces a clean file that satisfies both.
Can you recover a PDF I deleted?
No. This repairs a file you still have. Recovering deleted files is a job for disk recovery software on the device itself.
Is my damaged file kept on your server?
No. It is processed and deleted immediately, with nothing logged or retained.