# PDF Repair

Fix PDFs that fail to open with our PDF Repair tool. It rewrites the document with qpdf and a fresh cross-reference table, and when the table is too broken to follow it rebuilds the structure from the objects in the file with pdf-lib before writing it again. Upload a damaged PDF up to 10 MB and 200 pages, such as an interrupted download or a file a broken exporter wrote, and get a clean copy back.

## Frequently asked questions

### What kind of damage can the tool repair?

It fixes broken or missing cross-reference tables, wrong startxref offsets, objects shifted by stray bytes and small structural errors. These are the most common reasons a PDF refuses to open after a faulty export or transfer.

### How does the repair work?

First qpdf reads the file, fixes what it can and writes it with a new cross-reference table. If qpdf cannot open the file at all, pdf-lib scans it object by object without the table, the document is rebuilt from those objects and qpdf writes the clean result.

### Can every damaged PDF be repaired?

No. The tool can only keep what is still in the file. If a download was cut off, pages and images whose data is missing cannot come back, and a file with no readable objects is refused as damaged.

### How do I know what was fixed?

The result says whether the structure was rebuilt from the objects, whether problems were fixed during the rewrite or whether the file had no structural problems, and how many pages the repaired PDF has.

### What if my PDF was not damaged?

Then you get a cleanly rewritten copy with the same pages and content. Rewriting a healthy file does no harm and can remove leftovers of earlier incremental edits.

### Can I repair a password protected PDF?

Enter the password and the tool rewrites the file with its protection intact when qpdf can read it. An encrypted file whose structure is too broken for qpdf cannot be rebuilt, because the rebuild path needs readable unencrypted objects.

### What are the size and page limits?

You can upload one PDF of up to 10 MB with at most 200 pages. Processing stops after 20 seconds, and files that cannot be read in that time are refused.

### Will the repaired file keep links and form fields?

Whatever objects survive in the file are written back, including links, bookmarks, annotations and form fields. Parts that pointed to missing objects may be dropped.

### My file is not recognized as a PDF. Why?

The tool looks for the %PDF- header in the first kilobyte of the file. If it is missing, the file is probably another format with a .pdf extension, or it was overwritten, and there is no PDF structure left to repair.

### What is the repaired file called?

The download keeps the original name with -repaired added, so invoice.pdf becomes invoice-repaired.pdf. The original upload is not changed or kept.

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