Damaged PDF File

Problem

It is possible to get a PDF that cannot be opened in the PDF viewer. In this case, you might get an error similar to:

Error: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...
Error: Couldn't find trailer dictionary
Error: Couldn't read xref table

Cause

This usually means that your PDF viewer does not support a PDF version greater than 1.4. The main difference with newer PDF versions is that the xref table is compressed in a stream and is not available as a table.

Solution

You need to re-run the PDF transformation with the pdf.version parameter set to 1.4.