DocumentationExperience Cloud KCS

AEM dynamic media: Subfolder visibility and PDF Asset publishing status issues

Last update: July 3, 2026

This article explains how to resolve issues where subfolders are not visible and PDF assets appear unpublished in Adobe Experience Manager Dynamic Media.

Description description

Environment

Adobe Experience Manager Dynamic Media (all versions)

Issue/Symptoms

  • Subfolders under a specific folder are not visible in the folder tree.

  • PDF assets appear as unpublished in Dynamic Media, resulting in broken asset links.
    Example error message:
    image not found

  • The issue is reproducible in the affected environment

Cause

  • Subfolder visibility issues occur when the folder tree contains more than 10,000 folders and the default loading method is used.
  • PDF assets remain unpublished if processed with the Thumbnail option, as only thumbnails are published in this workflow.

Resolution resolution

Follow these steps to resolve the issue

  1. Enable ‘Load Folders Individually’ Setting

    • In Dynamic Media, enable the Load Folders Individually setting. This changes the folder tree loading behavior from a single API request (which can fail when there are more than 10,000 folders) to loading only two levels deep and fetching subfolders as needed.
    • Note: Access to this setting may require specific permissions. Ensure the user has the necessary rights to enable this feature.

  2. Review PDF Asset Processing Workflow

    • Check the PDF asset processing configuration in the upload job. If the process parameter is set to Thumbnail, only the thumbnail is published, not the PDF itself, even if readyForPublish=true.
    • To have the PDF published automatically, set the process parameter to none during upload. Alternatively, manually publish the PDF asset by activating it in AEM.
    • For eCatalog workflows, only the generated page images are published, not the original PDF.

  3. Verify Asset Publish Status

    • Confirm the asset’s publish status in the Dynamic Media Classic (DMC) application.
    • Assets can be requested from the delivery server using their published URLs to verify availability.
recommendation-more-help
experience-cloud-kcs-help-kbarticles