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PaulCongdon-UEC
PaulCongdon-UEC
Participant
March 5, 2026
Question

Password protected PDFs on Adobe Document Cloud don't always open and WebUI hangs

  • March 5, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 54 views

Several of our users experience Acrobat Web UI hangs when attempting to open a shared password protected PDF on Adobe Document cloud.  We ran an experiment and posted non-password protected versions and they open every time.   Does anyone know why the WebUI hangs frequently if the PDF is password protected?  We are doing a large PDF review project and require multiple users to post comments online, but clicking on the shared document links doesn’t always complete the file opening process if the PDF is password protected.

    1 reply

    PaulCongdon-UEC
    PaulCongdon-UECAuthor
    Participant
    March 5, 2026

    I forgot to mention that we have tried several different browsers and platforms.  The common characteristic appears to be that the PDF is password protected.  Here is a screen shot of some of the errors in the Edge browser

     

    creative explorer
    Community Expert
    creative explorerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 7, 2026

    ​@PaulCongdon-UEC hang on, your password protected PDFs are trying to be opened in Edge, a web browser? Yes, I can see why Edge and Acrobat are being flagged with warnings. I would use and open the PDFs on the desktop apps. Number one reason? It will bypass all that Edge warnings. ‘Poof’ gone! 

    But, wait? What about the comments? Yes, you can still make comments on the Desktop app. If you and the users open the shared link in the Acrobat desktop app, they can keep the file open and add as many comments, highlights, and notes as they want. And you can re-sync the file back to the cloud as well. 

    I always open any password protected PDFs on the desktop app just because of the rd flags! 

    m
    PaulCongdon-UEC
    PaulCongdon-UECAuthor
    Participant
    March 9, 2026

    Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn’t appear this approach will work.  First the shared link is not an explicitly shared link with me, it is a general shared link that anyone can use, so the document doesn’t appear in the ‘shared with me’ tab.  Since clicking on the link frequently hangs the browser, you can’t get to a place to either download the document or select ‘open in the desktop’ app.  The desktop app doesn’t provide a way to simply open a URL - as far as I can tell.   So, the problem seems to be in the Adobe Cloud backend and it really needs to be fixed.

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