Repair PDF

A PDF repair tool attempts to rebuild a corrupted or damaged PDF so it opens and displays correctly again. Corruption can come from interrupted downloads, storage failures, bad saves, or file-system errors — the result is a file that will not open, opens with missing pages, or crashes the viewer. VisualDocs uses pdf-lib's ignoreEncryption flag and page-by-page recovery to salvage as much readable content as possible, all in your browser.

The free tier rebuilds the document's cross-reference table and recovers pages whose internal structure is still intact. A detailed repair log tells you exactly how many pages were recovered and what was preserved, so you know whether the result is usable or whether you need stronger measures. For severely corrupted files where the free repair fails, the Pro plan uses a low-level binary scanner to extract content even from badly damaged files.

Repair is a triage tool: run it first when a PDF will not open, then decide based on the log whether the recovered file is good enough or whether you need Pro. It is not a guarantee — some corruption is too severe for any tool — but it recovers the majority of partially damaged files and saves you from re-creating lost content from scratch.

The free tier works by having pdf-lib parse the cross-reference table and rebuild it from the page objects it can still locate, which fixes the most common corruption pattern where the xref offsets are wrong but the individual page streams are intact. The Pro binary scanner goes deeper by walking the raw byte stream looking for page object signatures, recovering content even when the structural metadata is completely destroyed by a truncated download or a bad sector. A detailed repair log reports the page count recovered, any objects skipped, and whether embedded fonts and images were preserved, giving you enough information to decide whether to trust the output or escalate to the stronger recovery path before relying on the file.