FORENSIC ANALYSIS ADVANCED

PDF Structure Inspector

Explore the internal objects, streams, references, pages, and revision history inside a PDF — never executed, only read as data.

File

Original file is never modified · Embedded scripts are never executed · 100% local — nothing is uploaded

Common error messages this diagnoses

If you're here because something threw one of these, this tool shows you exactly what's wrong and how much is recoverable:

  • "Failed to load PDF document" — (Chrome/Firefox built-in viewer) — usually a broken xref table or missing trailer.
  • "This file could not be opened... it has been damaged" — (Adobe Acrobat/Reader) — same class of problem, Adobe's wording.
  • "Invalid cross reference table" — the index that lets a reader jump to any object is missing or corrupt.
  • "Unable to find the pages object" — the trailer's pointer into the document's object graph is broken.

What this tool doesn't do (yet)

No cryptographic signature verification and no decryption of encrypted content — signatures and encryption are reported as present, with their declared fields, never verified or decoded. PDF content streams are shown as decoded text, not tokenized into a structured operator list. No deep font-program (TrueType/CFF) inspection — that's Binary Structure Viewer's job. Name trees are only walked for embedded files, not the general case (JavaScript names, destinations, page labels). No outline/bookmark tree, no Optional Content Group (layer) inspection, no ExtGState/transparency/color-space/pattern detail. Revision history shows which object numbers are new or re-declared per revision, not a full dictionary-level diff of what changed inside them. Streams are decoded with a hard size cap to avoid decompression-bomb style files; anything beyond it is reported as too large rather than decoded. There's no batch mode.