Inspiring

Question

Why are shared documents not accessible?

Forum|Forum|25 days ago
May 27, 2026
4 replies
60 views

One of the touted payoffs of CC is “collaboration.” So we are attempting to use it, in a review-&-approval use-case. But it doesn’t work, because if we distribute a link to a document we’ve put in CC, the recipients get permission errors. There is no other discoverable way of “sharing” the document.

Anybody have insight on this?

Thanks!

kglad

Community Expert

@Thomas_Calvin

did you remove all security settings on the pdf?

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

There weren’t any security settings. Also I didn’t make any change to the file between the link working and not working.

kglad

Community Expert

@Thomas_Calvin

if you select the file on cc do you see “anyone with link can view”?

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Welp, it turns out that we have a few problems here.

If the file happens to be a PDF, Adobe just removes the Share option from the menu. This is not correct behavior. If an option exists but is simply not currently available, you grey it out. You don’t just make it disappear. This is UI 101. By greying it out, you show the user three critical things:
A. The function exists.
B. Where it resides
C. Some condition must be satisfied to enable it.
The documentation at Share cloud documents suffers from a similar defect: It shows you how to share files, but makes no mention of the fact that the steps don’t apply to PDFs. That critical information is off-screen, at the bottom of the page where you have no reason to scroll because you can see all four steps for file-sharing without scrolling. Why? It should be mentioned in the first section by simply saying “Except PDFs; see below.”
The links created by “copy link” appear to be useless.

Tarun Saini

Community Manager

Hi @Thomas_Calvin,

We’re sorry to hear about the issue you’re running into. Could you please ask recipients to try opening the link in an incognito window or in a different browser, and to log in again to see if that helps?

Regards,

Tarun

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for the follow-up. I think I have determined the pattern.

If you copy a file into the CC app’s Files area and pick “Copy link” from the three-dots menu, and then send that link around, recipients get a permissions error. Incognito makes no difference.

If you go back to the item in the CC app and perform the roundabout “Open in web,” “Share”, and “Get a link” method… it appears to fix the state of the document and the original link will work for everyone.

So this appears to be some internal problem at the CC server that is cleared when you perform the “open in web” steps.

The only difference between the URLs generated by the two methods is that the regular “Copy link” option creates one that starts with
https://documentcloud.adobe.com
whereas the roundabout method creates one that starts with

https://acrobat.adobe.com

Once you’ve performed the roundabout method, both of the links will work for everyone.

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Installed all available updates today and it’s still broken.

kglad

Community Expert

is this a pdf document?

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Yep.

I had a look at the “do not have permission” dialog the recipients get, and the title of the dialog includes the word “review.” So the intent is actually understood at some level. But nobody can access the document.

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