GoodReader Troubleshooting

In case of a trouble with WiFi File Transfer, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

• Make sure you`ve updated your computer`s and mobile device`s operating system to the most recent version.
• Restart your mobile device (power off, wait for a few seconds, power on again), restart your computer, and restart your WiFi-router.
• Make sure that the WiFi-signal`s strength is at maximum on both your mobile device and computer.
• Don`t use a Bonjour address from the WiFi Server window. For troubleshooting purposes, only use the IP-address.
• If your computer is Windows-based, delete all previously created network shortcuts you may have used for previous connection attempts.
• Temporarily disable all anti-virus and firewall software on your computer. Be careful with this step! Don`t forget to turn the protection back on when done troubleshooting!
• Make sure that your mobile device and computer are connected to the same WiFi-network. Your computer should be connected to your WiFi-router wirelessly, not via a cable.
• Make sure you`re entering the correct IP-address from GoodReader`s WiFi Server window, with the "http://" and ":8080" parts. IP-addresses may change from time to time. Please do not assume that the IP address is the same as it was when you were connecting the last time.
• Make sure that you keep GoodReader`s WiFi Server window open all the time while connecting and transferring files. Closing the Server window – or taking GoodReader app to the background – will forcefully interrupt any pending file transfer or communication.
• Some WiFi-routers, while allowing Internet access for each device, may prevent peer-to-peer communication between connected devices on the network. Check if it`s the case with your WiFi network. Depending on an actual router model, you may want to look for some setting like L2 Isolation, Layer 2 Isolation, or any other parameter mentioning any kind of isolation.

If all of this doesn`t help, please contact our customer support service. Please provide the following information:

• Which operating system is on your desktop computer?
• Describe your network setup – do you connect your mobile device and computer to a WiFi-router, or is your network created directly from your computer, without a router?
• If you`re using a WiFi-router, is it your own, or is it a public wireless access point?
• Is your computer connected to your router wirelessly or via a wire?
• Did a red label flash on GoodReader`s WiFi Server window at any time while you were trying to connect?
• Which error messages, if any, did you see both in GoodReader and on your desktop computer?

GoodReader uses a very simple built-in web-browser, a simplified version of Safari. It is stripped of many Safari`s advanced features. Some websites may use pop-up windows or certain types of JavaScript code. Some of those webpages and links cannot be correctly processed by the simplified version of the browser. If this is the case, try the following workaround:

Tap the link and hold it for a while. System menu will pop up with the choice of actions. Select the Open action. The link should open. If it doesn`t open, select Copy (this will copy the URL address to the pasteboard), and then press Follow the Link from Clipboard button on the bottom menu.

Alternatively, you may want to try using the copied link in Safari app, and then, if Safari successfully opens the file, try saving it to GoodReader.

To stop synchronizing ("unsync") a local file or folder, you have to delete its corresponding Sync Record. Tap Connect, select the Sync Records tab, and then use a small Trash button to delete the Sync Record. This will leave both local and remote versions of the data intact, but will unsync them.

It may be necessary to adjust the Advanced Sharing Settings on your Windows machine. However, the steps to do that may vary depending on your Windows version. In general, here`s what to look for: open Network and Sharing Center, click Change Advanced Sharing Settings. Find a Password-Protected Sharing section, and select the Turn Off Password-Protected Sharing option. Alternatively, a more secure solution would be to actually set up a password for your Windows user account.

When reading a file, the navigation menu may automatically hide itself after a few seconds, to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, quickly tap in the center of the screen. Alternatively, you can start dragging the left edge of the screen to the right – this will both bring the menu back, and start the file closing.

PDF and HTML files only: When reading a PDF or HTML file, there could be a link at the center of the screen. If you tap on it, it will take you to the link destination rather than turn the menu back on. For cases like this we have an alternative: quickly tap the screen with three fingers. This will make the menu appear, and will not trigger any links.

Tapping and holding on a text in a PDF file will select it, but only if that text is generally selectable. If you can`t select or highlight a text, it could mean that it`s not actually a text but a scanned image of it. Or it could mean that the PDF file was designed as copy-protected, with text selection disabled by the file`s author. 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.

Tapping on a PDF Annotation (highlight, markup, drawing, etc.) will bring up a popup menu for that annotation. That menu will include a Delete button. Keep in mind that it is possible to apply multiple highlights to the same text. If you highlight the same text repeatedly, GoodReader will treat each highlight as a separate PDF Annotation object. In that case you may need to repeat the deletion process to remove each individual highlight one by one.

PDF annotations made with GoodReader are only visible in applications that offer explicit support for PDF Annotations, such as Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader, or Mac`s Preview. Other software may display some annotations but not necessarily all of them, and not necessarily correctly. Try opening the PDF file in a more annotation-friendly PDF app to see GoodReader`s annotations.

Alternatively, GoodReader offers the ability to "flatten" an annotated file. During this process, GoodReader dissects all PDF annotations in a file, and embeds them 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, and 2) all your annotations become non-editable – they are not annotations anymore but normal pictures on a normal PDF page. This may also come in handy 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 export a PDF file from GoodReader via Email or Share. It is also available as a separate Flatten Copy command on the Actions menu at the bottom of the PDF viewer screen.

GoodReader can offer a chance to "unflatten" a flattened file after sending it if the recipient also uses GoodReader to view the file. This option must be explicitly enabled in GoodReader`s PDF Settings before the Flatten command is used. The default setting is to not 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 will be lost.

While the more recent models of iPad and iPhone are becoming more and more powerful, their processing power is still relatively low compared to a desktop computer. 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 may turn very quickly on a computer, but still lag on mobile devices such as an iPad or iPhone, especially with older, slower, models.

Try optimizing your PDF before transferring it to GoodReader. On a Mac, open the file in Preview, 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 copy of the PDF that is optimized for mobile devices.

The fonts for that particular PDF file may not be embedded into the file itself. In that case, iOS will try to automatically substitute the missing fonts. But the correct fonts may not always be available on mobile devices.

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

On a Mac, open the file in Preview, 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.

As an alternative, use GoodReader`s PDF Reflow feature to read the file.

The most probable reason is that you`re seeing a scanned page. A scanned page is not a text, even if it looks like one – it`s actually a picture.

Modern PDF-creating software often includes an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capability. Such software may add an actual text on top of the scanned image. In such cases PDF Reflow may show you a valid text, but that`s not always true – many scanned PDFs are still just pictures.

Here are some possible reasons for this:

• The page is a scanned image. A scanned page is not a text, even if it looks like one – it`s actually a picture.
• If the search string you`re entering contains whitespaces, it may be the problem. Text extracted from a PDF may actually 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 text from PDF is not always possible. Use the PDF Reflow feature to see how exactly the text is being extracted from this particular PDF file. If you see that the text was extracted incorrectly, we encourage you to send this 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.
• Sometimes PDF files containing right-to-left text (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) may actually encode the text inside the file backwards. Try using the Flip String switch when entering the search string to see if it helps. This will allow you to enter the string normally, as it is supposed to be read, but the search engine will flip it internally, to compensate for the incorrect encoding of the PDF file.

You may see a scanned page, and PDF Reflow may extract textual information provided by the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine of the PDF creating software. Optical Character Recognition engines sometimes produce strange character sequences when they`re uncertain about which characters they actually see.

Some PDF files with right-to-left text instead of encoding text as they should – from right to left – actually encode the text in the left-to-right order. As a result, the actual bytes of the text are stored in the file backwards. GoodReader extracts text in the order as it appears in the file, which makes it look backwards in the Reflow mode.

Some PDF files with right-to-left text instead of encoding text as they should – from right to left – actually encode the text in the left-to-right order. As a result, the actual bytes of the text are stored in the file backwards. Try using the Flip String switch when entering the search string to see if it helps. This will allow you to enter the string normally, as it is supposed to be read, but the search engine will flip it internally, to compensate for the incorrect encoding of the PDF file.

The file could get damaged during the file transfer process. So while you`re looking at the correct file on your computer, the actual copy that ended up inside GoodReader may be a damaged one. Please check the file size and see if it matches the size of the original file. In any case, try deleting and re-importing the file into GoodReader.

If re-transferring the file didn`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 Settings. This option also controls the single tap with two fingers gesture for zooming out.

When reading a file, the navigation menu may automatically hide itself after a few seconds, to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, quickly tap in the center of the screen. Alternatively, you can start dragging the left edge of the screen to the right – this will both bring the menu back, and start the file closing.

The Text Encoding setting may be incorrect. When reading a TXT file, tap the Settings button at the bottom of the screen, and change the Text Encoding to a more appropriate one.

When reading a file, the navigation menu may automatically hide itself after a few seconds, to give you more reading space. To bring the menu back, quickly tap in the center of the screen. Alternatively, you can start dragging the left edge of the screen to the right – this will both bring the menu back, and start the file closing.

PDF and HTML files only: When reading a PDF or HTML file, there could be a link at the center of the screen. If you tap on it, it will take you to the link destination rather than turn the menu back on. For cases like this we have an alternative: quickly tap the screen with three fingers. This will make the menu appear, and will not trigger any links.

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. Every once in a while an iOS update may fix some MS Office compatibility issue, so make sure you`re using the most recent version of iOS.

If you forgot either your App Password or File/Folder Password, unfortunately, there`s no way to retrieve or recover it unless you`ve set up the Email Password Reset feature in the Security Settings when setting up Encryption. Otherwise, the only option to reset the password and create a new one is by starting over completely, deleting and reinstalling GoodReader with default "factory" settings. However, deleting the app will also delete all your files in the process. So be sure to extract your unencrypted files to a computer first, and only then delete the app. (Unfortunately, there is no way to extract encrypted files if you are unable to remember or reset the password – that`s the whole point of Encryption.)

For unencrypted files, you can use USB File Transfer to back up your files to a computer – even if you can`t launch the GoodReader app itself.

After any necessary files are backed up, delete GoodReader from your device, then redownload it from the Purchased apps list in your App Store app. Redownloading previously purchased apps is always free of charge.

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 be experiencing with our app.