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Feeling rejected?

By David Nuffer

If your PDF is rejected, it may be for one of several reasons. The most frequent is violation of the 3 megabye size limit per PDF file, set in the Administrative Procedures II. C. 2.

In the court, we use Lotus Notes, which gets a Print to PDF button when you install Acrobat Standard. Unfortunately, any PDF file created by this method cannot be filed in CM/ECF. A rather cryptic message appears telling the user the PDF is not "well formed."

The Western District of Washington has listed some other reasons a PDF may be rejected. One reason is password security and another is the use of JavaScript by your PDF creator.

If your PDF contains any password security, it will not be accepted.

If you receive this error message"ERROR: Document contains code which may cause an external action (such as launching an application). This PDF document cannot be accepted."

The reason that PDFs filed in the court cannot contain OpenAction JavaScript commands is because they can be used to track those who view a PDF and to install malware and viruses.

Western Washington's site mentions another potential problem:

Word Perfect and Word files converted to PDF via Acrobat can cause this behavior when Acrobat is set to "High Quality Print"- often the default. In the distiller settings make sure the Default Setting is set to Standard, not "High Quality Print" or "Press Quality". These settings actually add an attachment to the pdf file. To get to this setting, select the Adobe PDF printer, go to Properties, Adobe PDF Settings tab, Adobe PDF conversion settings, Default Settings.

Full post as published by Utah District Court Blog on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).