PDFs can be deceptive. Many of them are simply text on pages, and some have graphics embedded in them. Others still have transparent layers which may contain a variety of things including text, graphics, signatures and other objects. Some of these interfere with Casedo and make it ‘bloat’ or Crash. Incidentally the same thing happens with this files if you open them in Acrobat and select File > Print to PDF. I have a document in front of me which was 4.8 MiB before I opened it in Acrobat. After I had printed it to PDF it grew to 246.4 MiB!
The solution to this issue is to ‘flatten’ the PDF, essentially reducing the file to a single layer. To the user, there is no discernible difference. As mentioned above, don’t use Acrobat for this purpose, or Microsoft Edge, but you can use the following:
- Mac – open the PDF in Preview and select File > Export as PDF.
- Windows – download and install Expert PDF Reader – it is free and not to be confused with Expert PDF (though this may have the same functionality, I haven’t tested it). Open the PDF in the application and select File > Optimise PDF
In both cases above you will produce a marginally bigger PDF than the original which is searchable and can be used in Casedo without issue. However, the Mac solution removes any embedded bookmarks, whilst the Windows solution keeps them.
Going forward we will include a pdf optimise function within Casedo itself.
