Can open with my password, but can't access editing with my password

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
April 1, 2026
2 replies
166 views

I have Adobe Creative Cloud and can open my document in Acrobat using my password that I created. But when I open my document with my password in Acrobat and click on EDIT, it asks for the password again but won’t accept it. I click CANCEL and tells me that it’s a secured document.

I clearly have the password or it wouldn’t have opened in the first place. There is no other password. So what’s the problem here? I’ve found suggestions saying to go into setting to change the security etc, but it again asks for the password to unlock the document, so that clearly isn’t the fix for this.

Why won’t Acrobat let me edit my own document?

Correct answer Dave Creamer of IDEAS

It sounds as if the PDF has two passwords--one for opening and one for editing. If you don’t know both passwords, I would go back to the original document and recreate the PDF.

Karl Heinz Kremer

Community Expert

Let me be the 3rd one to say that this document has both an open and a permissions password set - what you see is a clear indication of that. What software did you use to create/password protect the document - maybe it was something that set both passwords at the same time? Is there any chance you signed or encrypted the document? Again, based on the tools you’ve used, that may cause such a dialog to pop up.

Brian DzyakAuthor

Participating Frequently

I’ll repeat. I created the document in Acrobat and I created the single only password. Not two passwords. I don’t know how to make this fact any clearer. If there is another password, I didn’t create it which means Adobe did somehow for some reason and I have no idea what it would be.

Brian Dzyak, www.dzyak.com

Karl Heinz Kremer

Community Expert

Brian, I understand that what you did when you protected the file and what you see now are two different things. All I can say is that the evidence points to two passwords, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do to help you get around the second one.

There is however one thing you might be able to do - depending on what operations are allowed by the permissions password: You might be able to export the document to e.g. MS Word, and then convert to PDF again. This might not give you an identical PDF file, but at least you will get the contents of the file.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Correct answer

Community Expert

It sounds as if the PDF has two passwords--one for opening and one for editing. If you don’t know both passwords, I would go back to the original document and recreate the PDF.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Brian DzyakAuthor

Participating Frequently

Yeah, it sounds like that, but it is in fact not that. I created one single password years ago.

Yes, I’m coming to terms with having to dig out the original files from somewhere and recreate this. But the problem still exists that shouldn’t. Why can I open the file with the password but not get any farther? What is happening under the hood with Acrobat?

Brian Dzyak, www.dzyak.com

radzmar

Community Expert

It’s propably an user and permissions password set, as already suggested.

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