Ajmer, waiting outside a court complex with bad shade. Advocate asked me to send the vakalat and a couple of annexures on WhatsApp. I had a scanner pdf from the shop near Naya Bazaar. I tapped the paper clip, picked the pdf, and the chat sat on that clock icon. Then failed. Tried again. Failed. The tick never came.
This is a common fight. WhatsApp is fine for a selfie. A fat scan of legal paper or a Kota assignment bundle, it sulks. People blame the network. Sometimes it is the network. Many times the file is just heavy and awkward. Camera photos turned into a new pdf go through when the shop pdf will not.
I do not argue with the app. I make a thinner file and send that.
Chat keeps spinning then fails
The failed send looks like a sad document bubble with a retry. You tap retry on 4G, on wifi, on the advocate’s office wifi. Same fail. Meanwhile he is calling, where is the file.
WhatsApp document size cap sits around 2 GB on paper, so people say size cannot be the issue. Real life on a mid phone in Rajasthan is different. A 40 mb colour scan with weird encoding from a cheap scanner can fail even if the number looks “allowed”. The phone gets hot. The chat glitches. You look like you do not know how to use a phone.
I check size anyway. File Size Checker if the file is under 20 MB. If the shop pdf is bigger than that, the browser tool will not eat it. Right click or phone details will show you 35 mb. Then you already know.
Your file is not uploaded to our server. For court papers I care. I am not dropping a vakalat on a random “whatsapp compressor” with ads.
Wifi in the complex was a trap. Connected, no internet. WhatsApp kept trying. I switched to mobile data. Still fail. So it was the file.
Some pdfs are password locked from the shop software. WhatsApp might send them. The other person cannot open. Or our tools fail to rebuild them. If the pdf asks a password on open, get a fresh scan. Password pdfs may fail in these browser tools.
Another fail mode. You try to send as document, it fails, so you try to share as gallery. Pdf is not a photo. Gallery will not show it. Then you screenshot every page like a maniac. That also works, ugly. Better to make a proper small pdf.
Group chats fail more than personal chat in my experience. I send to the advocate directly, not the family group with 80 people and festival forwards.
Photos to pdf often go through
When the original scan will not move, I put the papers on a table. Phone camera. Four photos. Straight as I can. Then JPG to PDF. Each photo becomes a page. I download a new pdf. That file is often 1 or 2 mb. WhatsApp sends it like a normal document.
Light. Do not shoot under a yellow bulb if you can stand near a window. Ajmer afternoon light is harsh. Shade is better than direct sun glare on white paper. I use the court corridor wall as a board. No thumb in the corner. No chai stain in the frame. Advocate does not need to see my breakfast.
Order of photos is the order of pages. I name them or I drop in order. If I mix page 3 and page 2, he will shout. Arrows if the tool lets me fix. On jpg to pdf I drop carefully.
If the photos are still fat, I run Compress Image first. Slider. Preview. Then jpg to pdf. Two minutes extra. Chat goes through.
Kota students do the same with assignments. Shop pdf of 20 pages will not fly on hostel wifi. Photos of the notebook, compress, one pdf, send. Teacher may grumble. At least it arrives. I still prefer a real scan when I have time. For a failed send at 4 pm, camera pdf is the rescue.
Do not send 12 separate photos if they asked one pdf. They will lose photo 7 in the stream of good morning images. One document. That is the point of JPG to PDF. If you already have jpgs from the xerox machine, skip the reshoot. Compress if needed. Make pdf. Send.
Check size on phone before you send
I got into a habit. After I download the new pdf, I check size. Under 5 mb I feel calm. Under 2 mb I feel rich. WhatsApp on a weak network likes small files. The other person also downloads faster. Advocate on a bike using hotspot from the junior will not wait for 30 mb.
File Size Checker in the same browser. Drop. See MB. If still big, compress the source jpgs more. Do not keep sending the fat original “one last try”.
20 MB browser limit. If your WhatsApp fail file is 50 mb, you cannot push it through FileOnDesk as is. Break the job. Photo the pages. Or split if you can open it. Or ask the shop for a smaller scan. The shop can do grey 200 dpi in one minute if you use words they know. “Halka scan, whatsapp ke liye.” They have heard this sentence a thousand times.
Phone storage full is another fake fail. WhatsApp cannot save the outgoing temp file. Delete a few videos of last wedding. Then send. I have blamed the pdf when the phone was just full. Embarrassing.
Airplane mode on by accident. Also a classic. I mention it because I did it in the court parking.
If send works for you and the ticks stop at one grey tick, that is their phone. Not your file. Wait. Call. Do not remake the pdf five times.
When the original pdf is almost ok
Sometimes the shop file is 8 mb. Might send. Might not. I try once on data. If it fails, I do not try ten times. I rebuild from photos.
If the pdf opens and I can screenshot, I screenshot each page, compress, jpg to pdf. Quality is a bit less. For a signed annexure it is usually enough.
Rotate if a page is sideways. Rotate PDF for 90 or 180. Sending a sideways vakalat looks careless. Quick fix before send.
Merge if you made two small pdfs. Merge PDF. One chat document. People lose the second file in the chat.
I send a one line message after the document. “4 pages, annexure A to C.” So they know it all came.
I do not use status tricks. Simple: small pdf, document attach, wait for two ticks. After it sends, open the file from the chat yourself. I once sent last year’s affidavit because both files were named scan.pdf. The tick was green. The paper was wrong.
WhatsApp will not send this pdf, the original one. Fine. Make another. JPG to PDF is the path I trust when the chat keeps failing and the advocate is calling again.