Repair a damaged PDF
Truncated downloads, broken e-mail attachments and files from buggy generators often still contain their pages. Repair rebuilds the file structure around them.
Drop a PDF file here
Free · no signup · no watermark · files stay on this device · how local processing works
How to use Repair PDF
- Open the broken PDFEven if the preview fails to load, you can still try.
- Repairqpdf scans the file for objects and rebuilds a valid index.
- Check the resultOpen the repaired copy; the preview shows its first pages.
What can be fixed
The most common damage is a broken or missing cross-reference table — the index that tells a reader where each object lives. qpdf reconstructs it by scanning the file, which rescues most “file is damaged” errors. If qpdf gives up, a second pass with pdf-lib tries a lenient parse.
What can’t be fixed
If the bytes of a page are physically missing — say the download stopped halfway — those pages can’t be recovered. Encrypted files whose password is unknown can’t be repaired either.
Typical symptoms it fixes
Repair helps with files that were cut off by an interrupted download, saved by buggy software, or produce errors like “the file is damaged and could not be repaired” in one viewer but open in another. qpdf scans the file for objects, rebuilds the cross-reference table and writes a clean copy. If a tool on this site said a file “could not be read as a PDF”, try repairing it first and then run that tool on the repaired copy.
Need more than one step? The Workbench runs Repair PDF together with other operations on the same file in one go — for example merge → compress → protect.
Questions about Repair PDF
Is a repaired PDF identical to the original?
The content is the same; the internal layout is rewritten cleanly, so the byte size often changes.
The repaired file is still missing pages.
Those pages were probably not in the damaged file at all. Try downloading the original again.
Is it safe to repair confidential files here?
Yes. The engine runs in your browser; the file never leaves your device.
Can it repair a password-protected PDF?
Encryption has to be removed first. If you know the password, open the file in Unlock PDF, then repair the unlocked copy.