Why are some pages in a document smaller than others in Preview? And other problems.

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Level 2

212 points

Why are some pages in a document smaller than others in Preview? And other problems.

It only happens with certain documents. It also happens in Acrobat Reader. The sizes of the smaller pages varies. Intermittent problem! Sometimes it works fine.

Also, is there a way to make Preview show the content on pages when you hold the PgUp or PgDn key? I like to scroll and see the pages as they fly by. But the in-between pages are blank.

One document shows up with a lot of horizontal lines across the pages in Preview.

Can't open more than 1 document at a time with Preview.

Acrobat is sometimes incredibly slow.

I disconnected all my external disks (well, 2 just powered off)

I shut down and restarted (cold reboot).

Problem seems to happen when not Fit to Height.

Disconnecting disks makes no difference.

Does anyone make a PDF reader that doesn't have all these problems?

EtreC

EtreCheckPro report during the problem.

heck report added.

[Edited by Moderator]

iMac 24″

Posted on Sep 6, 2025 12:24 PM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,024 points

Sep 6, 2025 12:51 PM in response to betaneptune

Since neither Preview, nor Adobe Acrobat Reader can open Pages documents, this would have been better posted to your respective operating system community. If you share what that operating system version is, I can request the hosts move your post where it will get the most eyeballs.

Apple's Preview is not compatible with all variations of PDFs, so some martians are to be expected. When this happens, the current release of Adobe Acrobat Reader is usually sufficiently robust to handle the deviations.

You can open an entire folder of PDFs with Preview by selecting the enclosing folder with the Open panel. The spray of PDFs that result can be consolidated into one window with a tab for each PDF. See Preview > Window > Merge All Windows.

One should not need a PDF reader beyond Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader, other than to satisfy personal preference.

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Answer 2

betaneptune Author

Level 2

212 points

Sep 6, 2025 1:54 PM in response to VikingOSX

Well, both Preview and Acrobat Reader have their respective problems.

This got posted in some Pages area of Apple Support Community? Sure, move it to Earlier OSes. Maybe I clicked Pages by mistake? Anyway, the OS is macOS 12.7.6. Thanks! Hmmm. I don't know how it got in Pages. Definitely not the right group.

Why can't Preview just open a second file separately? Does any other app have this problem? And I never want to open all PDFs in a folder.

Another thing about these programs and at least one browser (FF): Why don't they open with a default of Fit to Height? At least with Acrobat, I can quickly press Cmd-0. And 1 page for each press of the arrow keys. Who wants the height to be 110% of a page? (Or a page to be 90% of the height.) I think it's FF that does this. Just make it fit. Am I asking too much?

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