Great Western Coffee Shop

If I buy an eticket from the GWR website it is "delivered" to the GWR App on my mobile. I also get a confirmatory email and a PDF of the ticket. IF the eticket doesn't get to my mobile App is the PDF useable as a valid ticket ?
I ask as the GWR website says that I cannot "print off" copies of the barcode as a back up.

Edit:  Elsewhere on the website  it does say that I can print it off ?? which do I believe ?

I would ask GWR (by email / twitter)...then you've got a definitive answer

I think that warning dates back to when the code wasn't sent out by email but was only available in the app.

This is my take based on experience:

As long as you can show the QR code, it shouldn’t matter how. Whether that’s on an app, PDF or printed out.

That’s what opens the ticket barrier and what’s scanned by the train crew.

In the past I’ve shown the PDF that comes with the email, put the tickets in Apple wallet and  sent a copy to my wife so she can open the barriers at stations with her phone.

I've got the GWR App and have wondered about the very same question.  Surely it's one of those basics about the app that needs needs to be unambiguous?

The problem that led to my original query has now been resolved - but it must be said with no help whatsoever from GWR. It started off with a query from a friend in the USA (who is normally very complimentary about the British rail system) who was having troubles with the GWR App/website. His queries to the the GWR customer "service" system produced no helpful answers - hence my OP on this forum.
It is difficult enough to find up to date, correct information on the web anyway, but is it asking too much for a company to have correct and unambiguous information on their own website ?

There is an absolute direct contradiction on whether (or not) digital or paper copies of etickets are acceptable as a valid ticket.  The FAQs say that etickets cannot be copied but the GWR email says the exact opposite ! It may be pedantic, but a "Barcode" is not a "QR code", but GWR seem to thing that they are the same thing. My own tickets stored in the App contains a QR code - but the GWR email that confirmed my purchase of those tickets tells me to scan the barcode when I use the tickets.

The ticketing system is difficult enough without a TOC seemingly doing its best to confuse would-be customers even further !

According to Wikipedia, a QR code is a form of barcode.  It’s a ‘matrix’ or “2D” barcode.  I now know a lot more about types of barcodes than I ever thought I would!

Etickets contain AZTEC codes, not QR codes.

Yes, this is a major bugbear of mine.

I've 'learnt' something else now.
In learning something new, something old gets discarded to make space  ::)