Repair a damaged PDF
Repair PDF on ilovspdfs rebuilds a damaged PDF by reconstructing its cross-reference table and keeping every object that survived, which often recovers the whole file and sometimes only part of it. It runs on ilovspdfs servers as part of Pro: the file is sent over HTTPS, repaired in memory, and never stored.
Pro tool. The file is sent over HTTPS, processed in memory, and never stored.
Drop your file here
.pdf · up to 4.0 MB
No files chosen yet
About this tool
A PDF keeps an index of where everything in it lives. Truncate a download or interrupt a save and that index no longer matches the file, so readers refuse to open something that is mostly fine. Repair scans the file for surviving objects and writes a fresh index around them. The result tells you what the scan found: often every page, sometimes only some of them, and a file with nothing left to recover is reported as such rather than returned as an empty document.
How to repair a damaged PDF
- 1Choose the damaged PDF.
- 2Let the tool scan it for recoverable content.
- 3Download the rebuilt document and check what was recovered.
At a glance
| What it does | Rebuild a PDF that will not open. |
|---|---|
| Where it runs | Sent over HTTPS, processed in memory, never stored |
| Accepts | |
| Files per job | One at a time |
| Maximum file size | 4 MB |
| Price | Part of Pro. Needs an account and a subscription; no watermark. |
| Status | Working |
Questions
- Is my file uploaded for this tool?
- Yes. Unlike the tools marked Private, this one sends your file to an ilovspdfs server over HTTPS, processes it in memory, and streams the result straight back as the response. Nothing is written to disk, nothing is logged about the contents, and nothing remains once the response has been sent.
- Will it always recover the whole document?
- No, and no tool can promise that. If part of the file is genuinely missing, the content in it is gone. A repair recovers what survived — which is often everything, but is not something to count on before you have seen the result.
- Why does this tool need a Pro subscription?
- Because it runs on hardware we pay for. Everything that runs in your own browser stays free with no account, at any file size. The cloud tools are the few jobs a browser tab genuinely cannot do, and Pro is what pays for the machines that do them.
Also called Fix a corrupted PDF, Recover a broken PDF.