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VSS corrupting PDF files

Thursday, July 06, 2006 3:01 PM

It may come as a big surprise to you, but Visual Source Safe (VSS) has a tendency to corrupt PDF files. To fix this less-than-optimal default behavior, you simply need to add PDF as a Binary File. You can do so like this...

Tools -> Options

Click on the File Types tab, and add ;*.pdf to the list

Click OK

Note: We use VSS 2005. Your mileage may vary with other versions.

Comments

John A. 11/9/2006 2:54:14 PM
Were it only that simple... I have 3 people working with various files in the same project(s). We're all using VSS 8.0. Each of the clients are set to treat PDF files as binary, and this option is set as well via the Admin interface in the File Types config. When we first noticed files being corrupted, we ensured these settings were in place and all seemed well for a brief period. Now VSS is corrupting our PDFs again and I've re-verified that the File Type settings for PDFs are set to Binary.

Always being curious about the creatures swimming in deeper waters, I have to wonder at this behavior of VSS 8.0 in light of the fact that I've recently read that Microsoft is trying to torpedo Adobe PDF with it's own proprietary answer to document portability - What's more interesting is that I've been using VSS for well over 6 years and have never seen this behavior in previous versions of the products....

All speculating aside, this issue is a deal-killer. This organization will dump VSS long before it even begins to think about an alternative to PDF. Anybody out there have some insight other than 'Check to make sure that PDFs are being treated as binary files?"

Thanks.
maddy 12/21/2006 2:58:13 AM
Yea thnx...that solved the problem.
Eason 2/13/2007 12:12:03 AM
thanks. the problem has been solved.
i have searched the solution for a long time.
thanks again.
gregory 3/8/2007 6:03:41 AM
Not only did our company need to set every individual client to include PDF as a binary, but was required to do a few more things. Each corrupted PDF had to be deleted from VSS, then both local and remote copies had to be deleted.

If those old copies are still rattlling around in local machines, or even remotely, then it will appear as though VSS is ignoring the setting to send PDF as binary. You have to be thorough and delete them - even delete the .scc file which resides in the folder where the corruption occurred (both locally and remotely).
Heather 8/6/2008 2:51:37 PM
I was able to set PDF as a Binary in VSS Administrator and the changes propagated down to the users and corrected our PDF corruption problem. I did not have to make changes on each client machine. Fortunately we caught this and corrected it early before many files were corrupted. Thanks!!!
NMTT 10/15/2008 8:04:06 AM
It solved! Thanks


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