Nook color PDF problem

[withfeeling]

PDF is a complex structure that can contain images compressed in many formats. Presumably some are not supported by the QuickOffice PDF reader in the NC. I doubt if the issue is B&W vs. Color. It is more likely that the particular software being used in your copier to make PDF files is compressing these two types of images differently.

[APerson]

I am not very happy. I'm having exactly the same problem with a .pdf I created from a scanned document. The .pdf was created with Adobe Acrobat Pro ver. 9 (the latest one). What is the solution?

[phoneboy]

This may have been covered in an earlier post(to lazy to read 4 pages).

Do you know anyone with an open android device with an app for pdf's. I would be curious to see if it is an issuse with the stripped down version of QO on the Nookcolor or a problem with the pdf itself.

Not a solution (wish I had 1) Just a way to trbl shoot the problem.

[withfeeling]

I have a rooted NC. I have tried MANY pdf files, including some that are quite complex and large. I frankly haven't used the QO viewer much because it is the most primitive. I have had NO problems with pdf files (so far) with either ezPDF or Repligo.

I'm sure I may find some problems eventually. On my PC I run Adobe & Foxit and I have encountered a number of pdfs that work with Adobe and not the other, or vise versa. Of course, the vast majority work fine on both.

[Atomant]

The latest update 1.1 has not solved the PDF problem. I still get either the big red X or garbled/smeared pages.

[withfeeling]

I'm not surprised. That may need to wait until 2.2 or even for the app store.

[JG_Coleman]

Yeah... unfortunately, the seemingly "enormous" list of complaints here (mine included) actually represent only a minimal fraction of Nook Color owners.

In all likelihood, we won't get nearly as much attention from B&N as we would like to hope.  I foresee this issue going unaddressed for quite a long time... if ever.

I wish it weren't so... but, the fact of the matter is that the ordinary Nook Color user doesn't even know how to (or doesn't bother to) load a PDF on to their unit in the first place.  Nook Color users that load and unload PDFs from their unit are already in the minority.  Nook Color users that try to load OCR PDFs are a minority within that minority.  We can probably expect to be almost entirely ignored by the shot-callers at B&N.

Let's face it... most us won't return our NCs despite this flaw in its usefulness... B&N has already gotten our money.  Getting them to address this issue will be like squeezing blood from a stone.

[LisaMarie_B]

I hope that's not the case. I actually got this as a gift but am really disappointed as a huge reason for wanting this was to read PDFs for school on a portable device. It's extremely convenient to have the ability to refer back to whatever I need without leafing through piles of paper printouts.

That said, I would also LOVE the ability to search and bookmark in PDF.

Perhaps I will save up and buy an iPad.

Is the nook app store an actual plan or is it just something we all hope will come to pass?

[Mark_OB1 Bibliophile]

LisaMarie,

> Is the nook app store an actual plan or is it just something we all hope will come to pass? <

The Nook App Store IS an actual plan, and they've committed to making it available in Q1.  What that generally translates into is sometime in the vicinity of Apr 1st.

With all the complaints here about deficiencies in PDF support in Quickoffice on the Nook, I did a bit of checking, and their general Android version has all of these capabilities present.  What's most interesting though is that the version number there is LOWER than the version # on the Nook, which implies that they purposely crippled the (newer) version that's included with the NOOKcolor.

The idea then being that when the App Store opens, you can buy the better version of Quickoffice there (for $10, or whatever).  Personally, after this treatment, I'm far more likely to skip the Quickoffice "upgrade" completely, and just buy ezPDF and Repligo, which each have unique features that QO lacks.

What you may be even more surprised to learn is that the NOOKcolor already has a better PDF reader built-in, with all the bookmarking, search, TOC, last-page-read features that we've been missing.  The only problem is that there's no way to get the NC to use that reader, since it routes all PDFs to QO.  The only way I discovered this is by opening a password-protected PDF, which QO can't handle, so it got passed off to the alternate internal PDF reader instead.

My guess is that this was a tradeoff that B&N had to make to get the QO reader for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents included free on the device.  If not, then somebody made a really big mistake when they chose QO as the default reader for PDF documents, because it's a big step backwards.

- Mark

[MacEvansCB]

MARK!!! You're Fantastic!!! You accidentally discovered an answer to one of my MAJOR problems with the NookColor ... properly displaying and reading PDFs.

I have a gigantic library of my own books. I'm on a Mac and I edit all my eBooks in Apple Pages, which has very nice export apps for both ePub and PDF. I have been exporting eBooks in PDF for my eReaders because PDF files allow things like page breaks, custom fonts and so on. My previous eReader was a Pandigital Novel (now broken), which treated both ePub and PDF files equally as far as display and features were concerned. I have a custom page size for the Novel and format all the book covers and illustrations in the Novel's native resolution (144dpi). The resulting exported PDFs displayed PERFECTLY on the Novel and I had all the features available.

Then I got a NookColor, which says its PDF compatible. I immediately created a new page size in Pages (3.5" wide x 5.4" tall @ 169dpi), reformated one of my eBooks, and side-loaded it onto the Nook. I was dismayed and VERY upset when I brought up the new PDF. Nothing worked right. The cover illustration was the big white rectangle with the red X thru it that everyone in this thread has complained about. I had to swipe up and down to change pages instead of touching the side of the screen. And worst of all, last-page-read was never remembered. Leaving the book and coming back always returned me to the blank cover first page.

I was so unhappy that I seriously considered returning the NookColor and getting another Pandigital Novel.

By the way, I found out why some PDFs work and some don't. It has to do with how images are placed in the original file the PDF is generated from. Images placed in-line in the text work. Images placed as floating do not work and show the empty rectangle.

I was in the process of converting all my eBooks to ePub when I chanced across your post. I immediately grabed an eBook, exported a PDF file, went into Acrobat Pro, added a password (12345 - remember SpaceBalls???), and saved the file. Side-loaded it into the Novel and selected it. It displayed PERFECTLY, illustrations and all!!

This is GREAT!!! All I have to do now is figure out how to yell at B&N so I can bypass the stupid QuickOffice pile of junk without having to password protect all my eBooks.

[Atomant]

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Mark_OB1 wrote:

What you may be even more surprised to learn is that the NOOKcolor already has a better PDF reader built-in, with all the bookmarking, search, TOC, last-page-read features that we've been missing.  The only problem is that there's no way to get the NC to use that reader, since it routes all PDFs to QO.  The only way I discovered this is by opening a password-protected PDF, which QO can't handle, so it got passed off to the alternate internal PDF reader instead.

My guess is that this was a tradeoff that B&N had to make to get the QO reader for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents included free on the device.  If not, then somebody made a really big mistake when they chose QO as the default reader for PDF documents, because it's a big step backwards.

- Mark

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Mark,  I too tested it with one of my PDFs and adding a password to it. The NC will now read the PDF scanned images. No more big RED X. Still did not display illustrations. Maybe that is my problem now. Impressive however! Great find.

Thanks also to MacEvansCB for the confirmation. At first I thought you both were a little nuts.

[twinimaging]

The problem comes when trying to display images scanned as .tif using Group IV compression (industry standard).  This is concering that BN will not address this as almost all black and white scanned images use this compression. 

[JG_Coleman]

I've attempted adding password-protection to my OCR/PDFs in the hopes that I might be able to use them in this "buried" PDF reader.  Password protection was applied in Adobe Acrobat X.  The Nook Color certainly recognized that the PDFs were password-protected and prompted me to enter the password before it would open the documents.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well.  Instead of displaying the red X's in place of each scanned page, it just wouldn't let me advance to those pages, at all, refusing to respond when I attempted to browse them.

So, at least from my corner, no luck with that approach.  For reference sake, I'm almost exclusively trying to get the Nook Color to work with OCR/PDFs downloaded from Google Books.

Also, a post was made earlier in this thread mentioning that many of the OCR/PDFs with which users are receiving the "Red X" problem are available directly from B&N on the NC as a free download.  In fact, this is true.  But the copies of these books offered by B&N are of absolutely horrendous quality.  Unlike the Google Books version of each book, which displays the actual scanned pages, the corresponding B&N version of the book is a plain-text version consisting solely of the OCR output from the book's original scanned pages.  The OCR is absolutely terrible... completely riddled with unintelligible sentences, many of which are translated into an incoherent mish-mash of symbols, numbers and letters of random case.  The B&N versions of the books, at least the ones I've been interested in, aren't even readable (literally).  Quite frankly, they are of such appalingly poor quality that it's almost inconceivable that they were ever made available to begin with.  I can closely replicate most of them by opening my word processor and randomly mashing keys for a few hours.

[kevbayer]

I downloaded a DRM ebook pdf, my NookColor brings up the cover and that's it. I can't advance any further. I even tried restarting the Nook. 

Calibre won't convert a file with DRM, dangit.

[hpg]

The password solution worked for me on most pdf's. Once you enter the code the pdf is treated as a regular book, with the ability to highlight, bookmark and so on. There were 2 pdf files that the nook could not deal with as pass protected-a concise encyclopedia of allmost 3000 pages, which locks up the pass pdf reader but which I continue to use as a non pass pdf using the go to page as an attempt to look something up, and a heavily illustrated world history book, which had the big red X issue an which i cannot use on the nook  at all.

[Mark_OB1 Bibliophile]

hpg,

thanks for updating us on that.  Good to hear that the password-protection trick does work for lots of PDFs.

- Mark

[yoohoo202]

Another option for this is to open a malfunctioning PDF in Acrobat. Go to Document > Optimize Scanned PDF, save it, and it should flatten the entire PDF so that it's easier for the nook to read.

Works for me, anyway.

[PeterDe]

Coming up on 5 months now and still no relief. I hope the update has a solution to the PDF problem after waiting all this time. 

This is how B&N describes the NookColor:

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Supported File Types****

Load these popular formats for eBooks, graphics, audio, and other file types from your computer or microSD card.

• EPUB (including Non or Adobe DRM)
• PDF
• Other documents: XLS, DOC, PPT, PPS, TXT, DOCM, XLSM, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX
• Graphics: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Audio: MP3, AAC
• Video: MP4

Not Supported: LIT, AMZ (Amazon), LRZ/LRX (Sony) 

**** Contains Reader® Mobile technology by Adobe Systems Incorporated

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I bought this to be an ereader, and it doesn't do that 100%. I'm getting more and more envious of my wife's Ipad everyday, she can even read Amazon books that are not available on BN!

I would do a full root, but I don't trust myself fully yet. I did do a bootable card, and what a difference it is! I can only hope the upgrade is half as a good!

[KapSukdulan]

you need to call adobe

[deemure]

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KapSukdulan wrote:

you need to call adobe

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Ignore this poster.  This person has been repeatedly posting to get people to return non-defective devices or to get them to root and add certain programs to their NOOKcolors.  Not very effective, but keeps trying.