iPad not previewing synced PDF files

Hello sanjuan and Welcome to the Webroot Community Forums.
 
Please have a look a https:///t5/Ideas-Exchange/Backing-Up-PDF-Files/idi-p/22396 for more info.
 
HTH,
 
TH

Hello sanjuan, Welcome to the Webroot Community Forum. 😃

Thank you for the link triple helix.   Backing up and syncing is not the issue.
 
The issue is opening the synced file.  When I log into webroot back up and sync on the  iPad, I can see the files.   The icon to the left of the file name has PDF in green on the icon, but when I attempt to open the file I get a message that says the file cannot be previewed.  I can open excel and word files with no problem from the same folder on the iPad.
 
I can acces and open the PDF files On my iPhone, but I get the message that they cannot be previewed onthe iPad. 
 
Thank you
 

Thanks for the extra info since it's the weekend and https:///t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1016 will online Sunday around 1:00PM EST if you can't wait I would suggest that you Submit a Support Ticket for further help.
 
Regards,
 
TH

iPads have been known to be a bit finickier over PDF file integrity than other devices. This doesn't happen often, but sometimes a file will be encoded in a PDF format that is readable on some devices but not others. Other times, a file might be unreadable on some devices and not others. This can be due to relatively minor corruption of the file. Some devices might still read it, and some might not.

The best way to see if that's the kind of issue we're dealing with is to take Webroot out of the equation. Try moving the files over to the iPad in some other way and see if they open. If not, we're looking at the files probably being corrupted or encoded in a format unreadable on that device. If the same files work after being ported over via a different method, we're probably looking at an issue with Webroot (albeit one we haven't seen before), and we'll have to dig deeper into that.

Please let us know the results of that test. 🙂

Thank you JimM.
 
I will email some of the PDF's and see if I can open them on the ipad.
 
My iphone will open the same PDF file that my Ipad will not open, but my eyes are so old I need a bigger screen than the iphone.
 
Good suggestion --  I will post the results of the test tonight.
 
Thanks
 

I emailed several of the PDF files to my iPad. 
 
I was able to open the emailed files on the iPad.
 
??

Assuming these are the same files you couldn't open before, this will need some additional investigation.
 
First, let's find a PDF file we can both use for testing.  Does the issue reproduce using any of the PDF files on our reviews page?  In the scroller, there are five PDF files you can get to by clicking "Click here for the full case study."  If it reproduces with any of those PDF files on your end, I can try to reproduce the issue on this end as well.  Alternatively, if you can point me to a PDF that's having this issue, I can use one of those instead.
 
I'll also need the model of the iPad please.  Thanks!

JimM.   i am using an iPad 3. Here is info from secure web --
 
Browser used for Last VisitMozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
 
I was able to open the pdf on the reviews page.   The problem appears to be limited to the PDFs using the sync function.
when the synced folder opens on the iPad I have selected download at the bottom of the page and downloaded a PDF.  It says download complete but I cannot do any thing with the file. Is there a way to email you the file that did download
 
when I select a file under the file tab -  that is when it try's to open but says it cannot be previewed.  FYI I was using trend secure sync with no problems before moving to webroot. 
 
Thank you for your assistance 

Thanks for the reply. I should have been more specific. What I intended to ask you to do was to download one of those PDFs on another device and then sync it. Then try to view it in the Backup & Sync app on the iPad. That way I know the PDF you are trying to view through the Backup & Sync program is definitely a good PDF file, and we can rule out minor file corruption.

Regarding testing on this end, I will be able to obtain an iPad for testing on this end, probably on Monday at the earliest.

One other thing that we will need to confirm is the version of the app in use. Please open up Backup & Sync on the iPad, and from the main screen, go to Settings and About. You are hopefully using version 2.1 (191). If not, please update it through the Apple store.

JimM
 
I downloaded the Royal Flying Doctors PDF To my work computer.    I then synced it on my work computer.  I then tried to open it on the iPad and got the unable to preview this file message.  I then used my iPhone and was able to open the PDF. I then emailed the PDF to my apple email account and was able to open the emailed PDF on my IPad.  
 
I am using the current version 2.1 (191)
 
 

Ok, I'll dig into this on our end on Monday when I have a similar device available for testing. Thanks for bringing this up!

JimM
 
Have you had a chance to take a look at this?
 
thanks

I haven't been able to obtain an iPad for testing yet, but I should have one available later today.  Sorry for the delay.

So this issue did not reproduce on our iPad.
 
That leads me to the conclusion that this issue is device-specific.
 
A couple of things to consider:
Is the iPad jailbroken?  This allows for possible breakage of things we can't investigate any further that involve root-level permissions on that device.
 
Do you have any third party PDF viewers installed on the iPad that you have configured in Settings to act as the PDF viewer?
 
Does this iPad connect to the internet in the same way as your iPhone?  If not, it's possible the file is being corrupted on its way to the iPad from the cloud storage.
 
Beyond those suggestions, we're at somewhat of a loss since the issue is not reproducible on other iPads.

Thanks for the update sanjuan!