Fujitsu warns of incompatibility between Sierra and ScanSnap scanners

[chrisandersen]

I had this pop up and and confirmed on their site
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/topics/topics20160914.html

 

[fischersd]

A better subject line would be "Fujitsu warns of incompatibility between Sierra and ScanSnap scanners"

Yours suggests you're somehow installing macOS Sierra from a scanner?

 

[BurgDog]

So far I've been lucky and not seen those problems. My fault if suddenly my pdfs go blank at some point in the future.

 

[Bending Pixels]

Perhaps Fujitsu needs to get off their rear end update the drivers. They've had the beta versions since the middle of June.

 

[grahamperrin]

Perhaps Fujitsu needs to get off their rear end

PDF also features in another recent topic, is EndNote compatible with Sierra?. If there's a common underlying issue then maybe it's for Apple – not Fujitsu – to fix.

 

[Fofer]

This is catastrophic news to receive, especially ONE DAY BEFORE Sierra drops.

This huge incompatibility/bug, as described, can delete existing PDFs or pages therein, simply by opening/editing/working with them. The way Evernote (and ScanSnap) is set up on the organizations I manage, these PDFs are shared across many offices and many people. Now I've got to tell every single user to avoid Sierra, for fear of losing any/all of this data? And it's all catalogued in shared Evernote notebooks. Sure, those are synced through the cloud, and are backed up regularly. But recreating an Evernote notebook, replacing damaged PDFs files individually as we come across them, doesn't sound like a fun job at all.

My gut tells me that this fix will require Apple's cooperation. Let's hope Fujitsu forces the issue and gets it fixed... pronto. What a whopper of an incompatibility. Sheesh!

 

[Peepo]

Fujitsu often has problems with drivers and OSX updates affecting the scansnap so I am not surprised at all by this. But this one looks worse... am I reading this right - will PDFs I scan years ago on my scansnap become blank or is it just new ones created on Sierra>

 

[Fofer]

Yes, even scans created years ago. Even PDF's we've emailed to other people. When they open them on their Sierra systems, they'll risk losing the file or pages inside, too.

By the sounds of it, Fujitsu is going to need Apple's help fixing this issue. Hopefully Apple will care enough to bail them out? Hopefully a fix comes quickly, from Fujitsu themselves (if that's even possible,) or in the form of OS X 10.12.1.

It's an ACTUAL "worst case scenario" Fujitsu has on their hands here. I'm flabbergasted.

 

[phillytim]

It's ridiculous that this can happen, especially due to the OS only being a point-upgrade.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Incompatibilities are going to occur and if you have any vital apps or peripherals you should verify before updating.

But PDFs created on one machine being damaged when opened on another? Do these affected Sierra users that get a Scansnap PDF from someone have Scansnap installed?

Sounds like the PDFs have malware built into them!

 

[Peepo]

Opening an old PDF is fine but rather it is editing one that could cause problem.

"Some pages of the PDF files that have been generated with ScanSnap applications may become blank pages when they are edited or converted to searchable PDF files on macOS Sierra."

 

[CalMin]

OP - Thanks for posting this. I'm going to have to hold off upgrading my main computer because I literally scanned 10-years of paper last year with a Scansnap in an effort to go paperless and declutter my life. I would be devastated to lose any of it - even with backups it would be a nightmare to sort out.

Fujitsu hardware is the best in the business - I have an ix500 that eats everything I throw at it. But their software is sketchy on Windows and Mac

 

[ugahairydawgs]

Does anyone know what in scanning software would kill previously created files like that? I could almost see newly scanned files, but I don't get how this could retroactively harm previously scanned documents.

Also, is this limited to PDFs opened in Preview only? Or would it also apply to files opened in other programs like Adobe Acrobat and PDFPen?

 

[GatorGhost]

Does anyone know what in scanning software would kill previously created files like that? I could almost see newly scanned files, but I don't get how this could retroactively harm previously scanned documents.

Also, is this limited to PDFs opened in Preview only? Or would it also apply to files opened in other programs like Adobe Acrobat and PDFPen?

Good question! I am using "Mariner Paperless" as my scanner app with my Fujitsu S1100 and all seems well. I have edited some scans to see what may happen...nothing bad so far. Also, I have viewed and edited some scans that were first sent to "Paperless" using "preview" and still no problem. But this could be just me...so extreme caution is still advised. Unfortunately, I did not find this out until I installed Sierra, however I am backed up well as should everybody that installed Sierra today.

 

[poorcody]

Opening an old PDF is fine but rather it is editing one that could cause problem.

"Some pages of the PDF files that have been generated with ScanSnap applications may become blank pages when they are edited or converted to searchable PDF files on macOS Sierra."

What isn't clear to me is does Sierra automatically convert PDF files to searchable?

 

[chatoyer]

So, I have spare 13" MBP (2013) that contains nothing but a clean install of El Cap (i.e., no additional apps or software beyond what is included in a clean install).

I did the upgrade to Sierra. Took a while, but no problem. Using my other 13" MBP (2015) which has the ScanSnap software, I used a USB drive to move a few pdf files created using ScanSnap (they are actually scans of car repair receipts). None of the files had OCR performed on them at the time of scanning, nor did they have OCR performed on them using any other software. In other words, they were just scans. Once on the new Sierra machine, and using Preview, I open each, re-saved, opened again, put rectangles and circles all over them (couldn't highlight text because, as I say, they were not OCRed), and re-saved and re-opened again. No problems with any of them. No corruption, no blank files, etc.

I went back to my main 2015 13" MBP running El Cap and did a fresh scan of a letter and had the ScanSnap software OCR it as part of the scan process before saving it as a .pdf. Using the same USB drive, I moved the new file over to the Sierra machine. Using Preview again, I opened it, underlined text, selected text and highlighted it, re-saved, opened, highlighted more text, did a strike through of other text, re-saved it, and re-opened. No problems.

I still may hold off on installing Sierra, but at least this gives a bit of first-hand data/experience to the issue.

 

[grahamperrin]

Nice timing, Fujitsu:

 

[Peepo]

What isn't clear to me is does Sierra automatically convert PDF files to searchable?

I tried to find this out too and I say that it DOES NOT. There would be public outcry if Sierra went through your files and converted them in background.
[doublepost=1474553142][/doublepost]

So, I have spare 13" MBP (2013) that contains nothing but a clean install of El Cap (i.e., no additional apps or software beyond what is included in a clean install).

I did the upgrade to Sierra. Took a while, but no problem. Using my other 13" MBP (2015) which has the ScanSnap software, I used a USB drive to move a few pdf files created using ScanSnap (they are actually scans of car repair receipts). None of the files had OCR performed on them at the time of scanning, nor did they have OCR performed on them using any other software. In other words, they were just scans. Once on the new Sierra machine, and using Preview, I open each, re-saved, opened again, put rectangles and circles all over them (couldn't highlight text because, as I say, they were not OCRed), and re-saved and re-opened again. No problems with any of them. No corruption, no blank files, etc.

I went back to my main 2015 13" MBP running El Cap and did a fresh scan of a letter and had the ScanSnap software OCR it as part of the scan process before saving it as a .pdf. Using the same USB drive, I moved the new file over to the Sierra machine. Using Preview again, I opened it, underlined text, selected text and highlighted it, re-saved, opened, highlighted more text, did a strike through of other text, re-saved it, and re-opened. No problems.

I still may hold off on installing Sierra, but at least this gives a bit of first-hand data/experience to the issue.

I wish Fujitsu was more specific about this... reading their warning it is pretty vague and unclear on the exact circumstances that this happens. I did find a more detailed post about it...

http://scansnapcommunity.com/featur...n-macos-sierra-may-cause-permanent-data-loss/

I am confused... does the affect old scans pre-Sierra, or only scans done after Sierra upgrade???
Are the affected files ok but only have problem if you use Sierra (?) to edit a PDF and save after?
If this is such a big problem and in Sierra, then why nobody else has issue except Fujitsu (eg. Adobe)? They seem to be putting blame on Apple and say that there is no fix but I am sure there is other software that uses PDFs on Sierra with no issues.


When you scanned, did you scan as B&W and did it come out B&W or colour? It says only if editing so did you experience that?

I think we are good if just scan and save! I don't really do any editing afterwards with the PDFs.

I also have a 2013 rBMP with Sierra and had the scansnap drivers... maybe I will plug it in and test - I'm going ahead and updating my iMac anyways - am tired of Fujitsu over the hears dropping the ball on their OSX upgrades... I remember a past OSX upgrade where I had to wait months for an updated driver.

 

[Undecided]

I'm using an old S500M with v. 2.2L16 of the ScanSnap Manager software, and no other apps provided by Fujitsu. I OCR using PDFPen Pro and, of course, markup PDFs using Preview as well. So far, everything is working fine (though OCRing a PDF seems to balloon the file size by 5x, which I don't think was the case before). I have created new PDFs and edited existing ones.

 

[grahamperrin]

From the page linked by @Peepo

… these issues are related to the PDF engine embedded in macOS …

 

[Peepo]

I did a color scan and opened in preview and saved and no file size difference.
Scanned same page as BW at around 70K open and saved in preview and increased to around 430K which is similar in size as the first scan in color. Probably the save as color bug I see here.

Did same thing with a bill I downloaded online in PDF which was NOT scanned with scansnap. Original was 80K and saving increased to 247K.

I did same test using Acrobat Pro and it did not alter the file size. Adobe uses their own engine obviously!

Maybe they should have made it clearer that this is not isolated to scansnap and possibly every PDF app out there which maybe uses Apple's PDF engine. The way it is worded makes it sound like it could be Fujitsu's fault.

I scan everything in Color anyways so doesn't really affect me now in that regard.

 

[grahamperrin]

The way it is worded makes it sound like it could be Fujitsu's fault.

It may be a problem with Fujitsu's use of Apple software, but I reckon that the core of the problem is with the Apple software. Again:

… these issues are related to the PDF engine embedded in macOS …

Maybe they should have made it clearer that this is not isolated to scansnap

Already , Fujitsu wrote:

If you do use other applications to open PDFs, be mindful to exit those applications without saving any changes until a fix is provided.

 

[lssmit02]

Apparently the problem is limited to specific situations, not every PDF scanned using a ScanSnap is affected. Link

 

[grahamperrin]

(The same link was in post 18)

 

[Peepo]

(The same link was in post 18)

While that link may have been posted before (I posted) but.... it has been updated since with new information. I think Issmit02 was wanting us to know so posted the link again. I probably would not have went to it again to see myself if it was not for Issmit02.