GoodReader Troubleshooting

When reading a file, the navigation menu automatically hides after about 7 seconds to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, tap the center of the screen once with one finger (this applies to any file type).

When reading PDF files, if you tap on a link, that will take you to the link destination, rather than bringing the menu back. As an alternative, tap the screen once with three fingers. This will make the menu appear again and will not trigger any links (works with PDF files only).

Tapping and holding on text in a PDF will select it if that text is selectable. If you can`t select or highlight text, that could mean the text is only a scanned image of text, or it could mean that the PDF file is copy protected—making it impossible to copy text from that file. To highlight text on a scanned, image-based document, try using the Freehand Drawing tool, and change the Opacity level to 75%, 50%, or 25% to simulate a highlighter tool.

To invoke annotation-specific actions (deletion, color change, etc.), tap a highlight/markup briefly to bring up the menu, which includes a Delete button. Keep in mind that it is possible to apply multiple highlights to the same text, so in some cases you may need to repeat the deletion process to remove each instance of a highlight.

PDF annotations made with GoodReader are only visible in applications that offer explicit support for PDF annotation, such as Adobe Acrobat or the Preview application on a Mac. Other software such as E-mail client applications (Mail or Outlook) may not be able to display annotations. Try opening the PDF file in a PDF Reader app to view GoodReader annotations.

Alternatively, GoodReader offers the ability to "Flatten" an annotated file. During this process GoodReader embeds all PDF annotations into the main PDF page body, making them a part of a normal graphical page content. This results in two things: 1) any app that can open a PDF file will display the flattened annotations, 2) all your annotations become non-editable — because they`re not truly annotations anymore, they`ve become graphic elements in the PDF page itself. This may also be useful if you want to prevent your annotations from being edited by someone else.

The Flatten option will be offered to you every time you try to send the file from GoodReader via e-mail, or any other option via the "Share" button. It is also available as a separate Flatten Copy command when viewing a PDF file and using the Actions button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

GoodReader can offer the chance to "unflatten" a flattened file after sending it if the recipient uses GoodReader to view that file. This option must be explicitly enabled in GoodReader`s settings (Settings - PDF Options - "Unflattening is allowed") before the Flatten command is used. The default setting is not to allow unflattening, to prevent your annotations from being edited by someone else. Please also note that if a recipient somehow edits a flattened file before unflattening it (by adding new annotations, for instance), the ability to unflatten previous annotations is lost.

While recent model iPads and iPhones have become more powerful, their processing power is still relatively slow when compared to desktop and laptop computers. The PDF file format can be very complex, allowing for its internal data to be formatted in a variety of ways, depending on the software that created it. Some PDF files may open instantly and pages will turn very quickly on a computer, but are not well optimized for mobile devices like iPads and iPhones.

Try optimizing your PDF before transferring it to GoodReader. On a Mac, open the file in the Preview application, then use Save As to make a new copy of that file — the result should be more friendly for iPads and iPhones. On a Windows PC, try using whatever PDF creation software you have available to create a new copy of the PDF file that is optimized for mobile device reading.

The fonts for that particular PDF file may not be embedded into the PDF file itself. In that case, iOS automatically substitutes missing fonts, but the correct font may not be available in iOS.

Using a computer, try embedding fonts into the PDF file.

On a Mac, open the file in the Preview application, then use Save As to make a new copy of that file — the fonts should be embedded in the new PDF.

On a PC, open the file, then use the Print option to "Save as PDF", making sure the Embed All Fonts box is checked, and rename the file to create a new copy of that file.

As an alternative, use GoodReader`s PDF Reflow option to view the file.

The most probable reason is that you`re seeing a scanned page. Please note that scanned page is not a textual information - it`s a picture.

Modern PDF-creating software often includes the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) information when creating PDFs from scanned pages. In such cases PDF Reflow may show you a valid text, but that`s not always the case, many scanned PDFs don`t have any textual information.

Here are possible reasons for this:

• the page is a scanned page. Please note that scanned page is not a textual information - it`s a picture.
• if your search string contains whitespaces, it may be the problem, because extracted text may contain no whitespaces or several whitespaces where there`s just one in your search string. Try to avoid using whitespaces in search strings.
• the text was not extracted correctly from a PDF page. Please note that correct extraction of pure text from a PDF page is not always possible. Use PDF Reflow feature to see how exactly the text was extracted. If you see that the text was extracted incorrectly, we encourage you to send this sample file to our customer support service for further examining. Extracting text from PDFs requires some heuristics, so we might come up with better extracting solution after studying your file.

You may see a scanned page, and PDF Reflow may extract textual information provided by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine of PDF creating software. Optical Character Recognition engine sometimes produces strange character sequences when it`s uncertain about which character exactly it sees.

Some PDF files with right-to-left fonts instead of encoding text as they should - from right to left - actually contain text stored in left-to-right (i.e. reversed) order. GoodReader extracts text in the order as it appears in PDF file, which makes it look backwards in Reflow mode. We`re still working on this issue. Please keep in mind that this problem is created by PDF creating software, which doesn`t store text inside PDF in the correct order.

Some PDF files with right-to-left fonts actually contain characters stored in left-to-right (i.e. reversed) order. To be able to find text in such files, the search string must be entered backwards. Use the Flip search string switch in PDF section of Application Settings to enter search string in readable form, and it will be flipped backwards internally during the search.

The file could get damaged during file transfer process. Please check the file size and see if it matches the size of the original file. In any case try to delete a file and reupload it to GoodReader.

If reuploading file doesn`t help, we encourage you to send this sample file to our customer support service for further examining.

You can turn Double-tap for zooming option off in PDF section of Applications Settings. This option also controls the single tap with two fingers gesture for zooming out.

Horizontal Scroll Lock feature only makes sense when you do vertical page turns. Therefore it is automatically disabled when you either turn the Horizontal swipe option on in Application Settings, or when you select a double-page layout for a PDF file (selecting a double-page layout automatically turns horizontal page swiping on).

When reading a file, the navigation menu automatically hides after about 7 seconds to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, tap the center of the screen once with one finger (this applies to any file type).

The Text Encoding setting may be incorrect. When viewing a TXT file, tap the Settings button at the bottom of the screen to find Text Encoding settings.

When reading a file, the navigation menu automatically hides after about 7 seconds to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, tap the center of the screen once with one finger (this applies to any file type).

Unlike with PDF and TXT files, for which we`ve written our own viewers, we use iOS`s built-in viewing engine for MS Office files. This engine may not able to open large MS Office files, or there may be difficulties MS Office files that contain features which are incompatible with iOS. An iOS update may be required to fix any MS Office compatibility issues, so make sure you`ve updated to the most recent iOS version. Otherwise, try converting your MS Office files to PDF format. Huge PDF files are not a problem for GoodReader.

Unlike with PDF and TXT files, for which we`ve written our own viewers, we use iOS`s built-in viewing engine for MS Office files. This engine sometimes shows MS Office files incorrectly. An iOS update may be required to fix any MS Office compatibility issues, so make sure you`ve updated to the most recent iOS version.

An alternative solution may be to convert your MS Office files to PDF format. In this case you will solve the incorrect appearance problem, plus you`ll get the ability to use our Find Text in PDF files feature and other PDF-specific features, like PDF Annotations, Highlights and Markups.

This file transfer process is managed by iOS, so its functionality may vary depending on what iOS version you`re using, and whether or not there are any iOS bugs in the current version yet to be fixed which relate to the process.

However, in general, it`s only possible to send a file from another app that GoodReader actually supports (like .PDF, .TXT… etc.). If GoodReader doesn`t support the file format, GoodReader won`t appear as an option in the iOS Share Sheet. Keep in mind, if you`re converting a file to PDF in the process of sending it to GoodReader (like saving a web page as PDF), GoodReader will not appear as an option in the Share Sheet because the file must be in PDF format before you attempt to send it to GoodReader.

It`s also possible after an iOS update, that your iOS Share Sheet may reset to default app options. Consult with Apple Support about how to manage Share Sheet options for the iOS version you`re using. In iOS 13, it`s possible to add "Favorites" to the Share Sheet, which in some cases is the solution to ensuring that GoodReader appears when you want to send a file from another app.

Open main device Settings, look for GoodReader settings there. Turn the Don`t open anything switch on and restart GoodReader - this time it will not try to reopen the problematic file.

Your GoodReader app password is not stored anywhere outside GoodReader on your device, so there`s no way to retrieve it if you`ve forgotten it. The only way to reset a password is to delete and reinstall the app. Please note that you will also be deleting all files stored inside GoodReader when deleting the app. Try transferring your files to a computer using Apple`s iTunes File Sharing before deleting and reinstalling. In the future please try to do two important things: do whatever you can to make sure you don`t forget your password, and keep copies of your GoodReader files in a safe place on your desktop computer or server, just in case.

Feel free to contact our Customer Support Service. Our friendly and experienced customer support team will be happy to answer questions, provide information, and do their best to resolve whatever problem or difficulty you may have experienced when using our software. Please make sure that a spam-filters you may have enabled will not block mail from the @goodreader.com domain.