Invalid Annotation Object

What program was this PDF created in? To check look under the File > Properties > Description Tab.

This happened again just a few moments ago. Both instances involved documents I created by scanning directly from a Xerox DocuMate 250 into Adobe acrobat. If it helps, the PDF producer is listed as Adobe Acrobat 9.12 Paper Capture Plug-in (PDF Version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x). Also, I've created maybe a hundred documents this way. Scanning and then marking up with the typewriter and this "invalid annotation object" has only come up twice.

Are you using any third party plug-ins with Acrobat?

Hi...can you please finish your advice on 'INVALID ANNOTATION OBJECTS'. What we used are highlights, underlinings and typewriter tools on an 800 page PDF file

I'm getting the same problem. Brought up a file I used just fine a week ago, and it acts like it is corrupt, with the "invalid annotation object" popping up all the time and preventing use of the file. I also can't "save as" the file. All I have done is use highlight and underline annotations. Is there a way to repair this?

You can try this technique to identify the pages that have invalid annotation objects on them:
1. Document > Extract Pages and select "Extract Pages As Separate Files".
2. Set the destination to a 'dedicated' folder that won't contain any other files and click OK.
3. During the extraction, click OK in all the message boxes that appear.
4. After the extraction, look in the destination folder to see which pages are missing -- these will be the pages that have invalid annotation objects.

Getting the same problem - tried extracting files per instructions above and kept getting message indicating problem with extraction. None of the pages extracted to the new file. Using a trial version of product and don't want to purchase without rememdy.

I have been having the same problem all day. It is really ticking me off.
I uninstalled and reinstalled Reader - still a problem.

Are you saving your file across a network drive with poor connectivity? Sometimes this can cause these types of issues.

I am getting the same "Invalid Annotation Object error".
I have a 28 page pdf document, created in Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.1.3. It is PDF version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x).

In my document I am making "redlines", arrows, text boxes, circles, etc. I don't get the error until I scroll down to page 10. Then it pops up that "Invalid Annotation Object" error and I push o.k. 14 times. The redlines that were on page 10 are now gone. I don't remember exactly what was there, but I think I had about 14 different markings on the page - so it appears that something happened to mess up my markups.

Some of the other pages with errors behave differently. As I click the "ok" on the error message, I can see the redlines I made re-appearing on the page behind the error box. Then they disappear again, and reappear again. It is really so frustrating! How much does Acrobat Pro cost?

I can already tell which pages have the problem, because I only get the error message when I go to that page. Hence I did not try extracting pages as was mentioned here.

My co-worker tried to open the file in adobe reader (I have Acrobat Pro) and it gave the same errors in the same ways.

I tried to do a "save-as" and got an error "The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (14)."
I tried to print to a pdf. I got two error messages, "The Document could not be printed", then "There were no pages selected to print"

I tried to print a paper hard copy. When the printer progress bar got to page 10 of 28, it popped up another error that said "The document could not be printed", then another "there were no pages selected to print". (The first 4 pages actually did come out of the printer, after about 1/2 an hour.)

I am not saving the file over a network, it is right there on my hard drive.

I was using this file (and other pdf files) on my computer all day. This problem appeared to come from nowhere with no warning.

Any idea how I can recover this file? I lost a lot of information, I would really like it back.
If not, any ideas on how to make the error messages stop, so I can at least continue with what didn't break?
If not, any ideas on how to prevent this happening again?

What happened to this thread. I've got exactly the same problem on Acrobat 9 Pro and have tried the same fixes with the same results and am losing two full days of work.

Has anyone provided a solution?

I paged through my document using the thumbnail pages. Each time I hit a page that popped up with an invalid object notice, I deleted the page. Then I replaced the deleted page with one from the original non-annotated document. For me it was 2 pages out of 28 and it beats losing the whole document.

OK, I have exactly the same problem, and exactly the same experience as fly fish boy above. Now I would really like the moderator to come up with a solution, rather than asking questions about connections, because the problem is with Adobe Acrobat.

I tried her solution, and the document ended up in more than 20 different files. I don't quite understand what the use of that is.

One solution could be to remove all annotations. How could that be done?

Has anyone found a solution to this yet? or why it is happening. I work for a publishing company and use this for editing books. it is very frustrating to lose edits on a 280page book. Help??????

If you encounter this issue, can you please upload a file with an "Invalid Annotation Object" error message and provide a link to that file? You could upload it to Acrobat.Com and post the URL.

Please also include your steps which resulted in the error dialog:
* Which version of Acrobat were you using to make the comments? (Acrobat 9 Pro Extended? Acrobat 8 Standard? Mac vs. Win?)
* Which annotation tools were you using?
* What were the steps which preceded the error?

Thanks.

Dave, Acrobat Team

Here is the link for your file, which will be available for 7 Days or 100 downloads.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/VGlkM25OWkI1aVpMWEE9PQ

Here is the link for one of my books.

Please Help! We're scheduled to have a training session on Wednesday.

This happens when I click on a PDF page with the problem objects. We're transitioning our tax return workpapers to digital prep in Adobe with multitudes of annotations for referencing. I am working in a 103 pg document. One page with the problem has at least 2 1/2 - 3 dozen marks. The full document was almost completely finished and represents many hours of work.

This did not help: all pages extracted, but all bookmarks were gone and the same error occurred.

same here

ditto

Since my document is confidential client data I cannot upload it for testing.

Prior systems questions:
PDF Producer: DynaPDF 2.0.44.443
PDF Version: 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x)
Adobe 9.2.0 Standard (updated and rebooted this morning).
Moved files to desktop to work locally, but same problems.
Tools used: Typewriter; highlights; textboxes; sticky notes; call outs; and PDFlyer stamps

I have also been having this problem in a number of documents, and created by different users.

I found that by doing this (listed below) I could find the objects that were on the pages that were corrupt

Edit>
Preferences>
Commenting>Uncheck the following boxes:

Enable text Indicators and tool tips

Ensure that popups are visible as the document is scrolled

OK>Select the "Select Object Tool" on the "Advanced Editing" toolbar and then delete the comments on the problem pages.

It appears that on the documents I have checked so far the Line Tool is on every page with an error. But it does not happen everytime we use the line tool.

Hope this helps

Hi DavidStromfeld,

I've been having the same problems as other users, with several documents. I'm currently on Acrobat 9 Pro. There's a chance I downloaded and began annotating the docs on Acrobat 6 Standard.

Unchecking the preferences boxes, indicated by a user above, seems to slow the recurrence of the error, but I still can't print as a new pdf or anything.

The same issue happens when I open the pdf in Reader, or email the pdf to a friend using a Mac.

Here are links to two pdfs with the problem:
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/filedist/mGUeUOio/community%20ecol-ecological%20efficiencies-definitions%26terminology-Kozlovsky%201968-Ecology.pdf

http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/filedist/qym2iCB7/macroecology-metabolic%20theory%20o%20ecology-Brown%20et%20al%202004.pdf

I hope you all can patch this. It's quite problematic.

Best,

Ryan Hechinger

Two items...

1) Edit > Preferences > Commenting >
Does not exist on the Mac version... you're writing about Windows. On the Mac, it's Acrobat > Preferences, and then a dialog box.2) I tried several things, but eventually the document would open without the message. That part was nice, and I'd be happy now... except it also lost ALL of my editing, even though I had saved it.

Adobe crashed while I was trying to change the font-size in a text box (another problem where the instructions are for Windows, and the commands don't appear to exist in Mac). When I tried to relaunch Acrobat Pro, I started getting the error.

I see this problem has been around for more than a year... is there any progress on preventing it?

Thanks

I am also getting this error when trying to select all form fields so I can do a global change to font size in Acrobat 5. I checked to see if there were any comment to delete, but there were none to delete. Is there a solution to this problem?

I have done all these steps as I am having the same problem. I am able to scroll through the document now but I cannot seem to save it. The message reads "This document cannot be saved. There was a problem reading this document(14)". Could you please provide a proper fix or solution for this problem as I have some extremely important document that I am working on and cannot go any further. The problem seems to be a long standing one. I am using adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.

Is there anyone who can answer this query?

Yesterday I initiated an Adobe update cycle on my computer as I was told to do.

This morning I got a message saying that I need to restart my computer for the updates

to take affect. After the reboot, I tried to open my scanned PDF of a publication, which I had been working on since last week with no problems (before the update). When I attempted to open it this morning I get a warning: “Invalid annotation object” with an “OK” button. I pressed this button and nothing happened. I pressed it multiple times and nothing happened. I kept pressing the button and it finally went away. I went online to find out what this warning meant, and I found very many people having the same problem.



The short of a long story—I may have a corrupted document now. I need to know how to

fix this problem, as it has me “dead in the water” in naval terms.

Can you help provide the information that Dave asks for?

I have the same problem described by multiple users on this forum. I get the invalid annotation object whenever I attempt to mark-up a file using Acrobat Adobe Pro 9. I have been using it successfully for over year, however this week, I have been editing a 1,200 page book that I fear has been corrupted due to this issue.

I am unable to provide links, as the data I am dealing with is not releasable outside the US Government.

I have attempted to implement each solution suggested by forum members, without success. If I could simply delete the offending pages, and re-insert fresh copies, my problem would be solved, but I am not able to delete pages nor save the file. Starting over is always an option, but I will lose over 2 months of work if I do.

What direction should I take?

I have also experienced this ERROR on more than one occasion and with a significant time interval between occurrences - in other words Adobe have NOT been making enough effort to solve this issue.
Last time I solved the problem by deleting the offending pages, but my latest (360 page!) document will not allow me to Save, Print, Delete or do anything basically apart from View!
I can see that there are 6 corrupt pages, showing annotation ONLY and NOT content (i.e. blank pages under).

The following error messages have been received, at various times during attempted rescue:-
"Invalid annotation object"
"An incorrect structure was found in the PDF file"
"Expected a dict object"
"The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (14)"

Surely, Adobe can provide a fix for such a problem? If I cannot fix this file then I have lost approx. 10 hours work and this is NOT acceptable.

Any help would be gratefully accepted................cannot justify starting again........and why should I?!

I posted a message last week describing comment and mark-up difficulties I am experiencing with Acrobat 9. I get the error "invalid annotation object" randomly throught a 1,200 page document that prevents me from continuing the mark-up. I also have difficulty saving the file when I attempt to exit. I often get the error "The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (14)".

I cannot supply a link, because of the nature of the material, and I have attempted to implement the solutions suggested on this forum without success. Until I find a fix, I am dead in the water and have a deadline to meet that is fast approaching.

I am looking for a solution, or at least some attention, from the Adobe Acrobat team. Can you help? What is being done to resolve this issue?

The steps I use preceding the error:

1. Open the file
2. Click on the any of the commenting and mark-up tools
3. Click on the location on the page where I want to insert the comment
4. The error message "invalid annotation object" appears
5. I often have to click OK several times before the massage disappears.

At this point, I click on SAVE and I get the error message "The document could not be saved. There was a problem reading this document (14)" appears.

If I attempt to save the file a second time, it sometimes is successful, but not always.

I am using Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 and Windows Vista.

Jadik

I am just as infuriated as you at the moment. I cannot even extract my GOOD pages.

Adobe really is responsible for sorting this one out - there should at least be a fix to rescue your good work. This is an ongoing problem - I first experienced it last year!

My document is less than useless at the moment - I cannot do anything with it.

In the meantime, I have diverted my attention onto something else - to reduce my stress levels and in the vain hope that someone comes up with a miraculous fix!

If I find anything out or get a solution I will post it.

744Flyboy77,

It makes me feel better to commiserate with someone. I appreciate the response. Perhaps if the Acrobat Team reads these posts, they will at least respond to us in a meaningful way. We'll see.

I retired from Delta Air Lines 4 years ago. So your name caught my eye. Did or do fly the 747-400 or the 777?

This is a horrible problem. I encounter it frequently. I have to write comments on specifications as part of my job, and since this error occurs on many documents, it's rather frustrating. I don't know what's causing it. However, I found out that if I do an OCR scan on a document that has not been previously "text identified", it sometimes fixes it. It doesn't seem to correct ones that already recognize text.
This is a BUG, BUG, BUG! I've read through all the suggestions, and while it's feasible to remove pages and start over, it's such a pain when I have to do it over and over on different documents. I hope Adobe creates a fix for this...and fast!
I am using Acrobat Standard (9.3.2) on Windows XP Pro SP3. I use most of the Comment & Markup tools (i.e. Callout, Text Box, Arrow, Line, Rectangle, etc.)Here is a link to a small offending file: https://www.yousendit.com/download/OHo0ck8zcVhLVlZFQlE9PQ

I have tried everything we can think of with this file. The first page seems to be the culprit. The second page extracts fine. Others in my office with identical setups have the same problems with the same files.

Help me, Adobe-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope!

Hi mshayne,

The Document Properties for that file indicate it was created with an Epson Prefection 4490 photo scanner- is that correct? On the Epson Perfection 4490 product page it states that it uses ABBYY Fine Reader Sprint Plus OCR. Pretty sure this means that the conversion to PDF was not done with Acrobat at all but with ABBYY FineReader. So they may be the company you need to contact about why Acrobat 9 cannot read PDFs created with thier software.

Adobe has gotten much much more restrictive over the last several versions on adhering to the PDF Specification. In the past they were fairly lax so Acrobat would read/view many third party software vendor created PDFs that did not in fact comply, with the official spec. These days that happens less and less often.

Not completely sure this is what is causing your problem, but it may be worth a try to convert the original file with Acrobat instead and see if that makes a difference.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.pdfscripting.com
www.windjack.com

Dimitri,

Thanks for your response. I created the .pdf from a hardcopy through Acrobat using the Epson Scanner. I selected custom scan, and the "Make Searchable (Run OCR)" was selected. Not all of the files that have problems have we scanned ourselves, and the fact that this one came from the Epson was a fluke, as my usual HP scanner was temporarily unavailable. With all of the people having this problem with Adobe, I'm pretty sure it's their issue. I'd love to be able to identify the source of the problem, but there seems to be no way to duplicate it with any reliability. It either happens or it doesn't.
Any other ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

You know what? It would be REALLY nice and respectful if ADOBE actually DID something seriously about this ongoing problem!

Even if it is a glitch that cannot be predicted / eradicated, they should have a simple fix that allows users to save all their good / unaffected pages within such corrupted documents.

I used to hold them in MUCH higher regard than MS for example, but my confidence is sadly slipping.............

The best method to address this issue is through the [url=https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform]Bug Report Form[/url] -- as these forums are user-to-user based.

Here are a few more workarounds:
1) Work with a local copy of the file where possible, then copy the results back to the server (or wherever they should be located). Commenting on a large file and spooling to and from the server over the same connection can cause issues. Also copying a file from a network drive on one server to a network drive on another server can cause potential problems as well.
2) Save often -- especially when you have large files and a lot of annotations.

Thanks for posting your file. Would it be possible for you to post the scanned version of your file before you ran the OCR?

Hi mshayne,

The only other thing I tried with your file since my post was to use Examine document and remove all the comments. With those annotations gone the error message stopped popping up, but I assume you already know that. Sorry this has been so frustrating for you and others in this thread. I hope there is an explanation and fix soon.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.pdfscirpting.com
www.windjack.com

I don't know if this will help but the issue at least for me involved the printer driver in some way. I am using Acrobat 9 Extended, I can save a document with no issue. If I try to print to an HP Color Laser 2020 on the network, it will go through the first steps, then message 'The document cannot be printed' followed by 'There were no pages to print' The document prints without issue or messages on my local (USB) HP laserjet P1006 and the network monochrome HP laser. Hope this helps debug the problem.

I had the "Invalid Annotation Object" and could not edit the document to remove what I suspected was the offending "object" (lines using the Line Tool), could not save the document, and had to use "force quit" to get out of Acrobat. I followed the instructions above by first opening a document that did not have the problem and then making the recommended changes. I then opened the offending document and was able to remove the lines. When I tried to close the document I got the message that "this document can not be saved," but I tried to save a second time and it worked. I had the problem with another set of red lines; again, after editing, I got the message that the document could not be saved but by repeating the attempt to save it worked on the second try.

Thanks to bladerider for the help.

This may be completely unrelated (has nothing to do with using the lines tool), but I can generate the "Invalid Annotation Object" message when I make pdfs using the R statistical package, anytime I incorporate loads of tooltips. I'm not sure what the exact number is, but dozens seem to be OK, and several hundred pretty routinely gets me the "Invalid Annotation Object" crash, typically while scrolling up and down in the document in Acrobat Reader.

So, not sure if it's helpful in this thread, but my idea is it might have to do not so much with 'corrupt' objects but simply with number of annotation objects, perhaps a memory allocation issue or something like that.

I don't know if this will really help or not, but here goes.

We do not usually encounter this problem with Acrobat 8.

I have one employee encountering this issue with Acrobat 9 Pro (updated to most recent version), working on Windows XP (employees using Mac or Vista with Acrobat 9 have yet to encounter this problem).

PDFs are created from various sources, usually InDesign or FrameMaker, though sometimes Office documents using Distiller.

Problem invariably occurs after an Acrobat crash. Majority of commenting tools are being used (Text Edits, Sticky Notes), though I've asked the person having this problem the most if she can "examine" the document to find out if it is a particular tool becoming corrupt (will update if we can figure this one out).

We are currently able to work around by extracting the good pages, inserting clean copies of the corrupted pages and re-commenting on the pages that we lost. This is time consuming and potentially costly if our reviewers forget to save often.

Like several others on this board, I cannot post files due to confidentiality issues. However, in our experience, the problem is something in the comments that is becoming corrupted when Acrobat crashes. It is not a corruption in the comments that is crashing Acrobat either, as the crash will happen several pages past the page (or pages) that end up with corrupt comments.

We would love a fix for this! I understand that it is difficult to troubleshoot an error without being able to examine the error/document itself. I will post more detail if we can figure anything else out.

I just encountered this error on a document sent to us for commenting.

There were so many posible fixes, that we chose the most simple one - and it worked.

We saved the corrupted file to a key, opened it on a Mac, and saved it with a new name.
When it was again opened on the original Windows machine, it was fine, all comments etc were still there, but the error was gone.

What it most annoying (note multiple words could be substituted here) is the apparent lack of concern and service on the part of the Adobe reps who asked for files in 2007 !!!!!! and have not responded back to this forum. It is now 2011 and the company makes no effort to at least acknowledge they are even working on this problem. Saying they should be ashamed of themselves seems petty at best.

Disgusting.

i have been dealing with this for a few days. tried all the advice here and using extract to separate pages i located the problem pages. i decided to try extract without "separate pages" and i can now view the complete document without errors, but i still cannot run the comment summary.

I am using a web-based software for suppliers to submit data/drawings for us to review before they ship the certified parts and where we track the data through the review and provide feedback. I have an internal user that used Acrobat 8.3 to add annotations to an Acrobat 7 version of the drawing. Would using different versions of acrobat have caused the Invalid Annotation Object errors?

Also, because the errors occur over and over to infinity, the system does not allow me to select anything from the toolbar.

Can you help?
I cannot send you the file as the data is sensitive.
I can only tell you that the internal user saved a version of the original drawing to their desktop and then using Acrobat 8.3, added annotations and then uploaded that file back to the web-based tool so that the supplier would know what to fix on their drawing. Turning off those comments/annotations will not work because the supplier needs to make those annotated corrections.

I was not working for Adobe when this thread started, but CGW0730's comment got me involved. It seems that there are many things going on with these documents. What I've gleaned from reading the entire thread is that the most common problem is document corruption (caused during a crash) or a 3rd party PDF Creator, causing the Comments to get corrupted (seems that the Line tool is the biggest culprit).

CGW0730,

I don't believe the different versions of Acrobat caused the issue, because newer versions of Acrobat can always open older files. It sounds like a network corruption issue, or an issue with the Web-based software you are using to create the PDF. Is it possible for your users to Comment using Adobe Reader 10 (X)? Adobe no longer supports Acrobat 7 and they are ending support for Acrobat 8.

To summarize, the recommended fixes are:

Fix 1
1. Go to Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac)
2. Click Commenting on the top left and Uncheck the following boxes:
      Enable text Indicators and tool tips
      Ensure that popups are visible as the document is scrolled
3. Click OK
4. Choose the Select Object Tool (View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing), then delete the comments on the problem pages

Fix 2
You can try this technique to identify the pages that have invalid annotation objects on them:
1. Document > Extract Pages and select "Extract Pages As Separate Files"
2. Set the destination to a 'dedicated' folder that won't contain any other files and click OK (preferably on your hard drive, not a server)
3. During the extraction, click OK in all the message boxes that appear
4. After the extraction, look in the destination folder to see which pages are missing -- these will be the pages that have invalid annotation objectsPlease let me know if you've tried these 2 fixes. Also, always include:

* Which version of Acrobat were you using to make the comments? (Acrobat 9 Pro Extended? Acrobat 8 Standard? Mac vs. Win?)
* Which annotation tools were you using?
* What were the steps which preceded the error?