Removing password protection by printing to pdf

Question

Hello - End-user has a 400 KB pdf that is password protected. He claims that he has always been able to print to "adobe pdf" and it will remove the password and keep the same size of the to around 400 KB. Now when he tries doing this, the pdf balloons to 27 MB in size.

I tried this with Acrobat Standard and Pro XI but same issue. I have also tried to compress the 27 MB pdf, which cuts the size in half, but still unacceptable as we have to mail these.

Any suggestions?

Dov Isaacs · Accepted Answer

No, printing to Adobe PDF will absolutely not remove password protection. In fact, it will refuse to produce a PDF file from a password-protected PDF file. This has been true from the start. If this process actually worked, “security” wouldn't really mean anything, would it?You want a suggestion to remove the password protected? Get and enter the password for the file and remove password protection via the Document Properties' Security tab. - Dov

Test Screen Name · Answer

Printing to PDF is not recommended. The results are often unsatisfactory. Of course Adobe doesn't support this way of removing security either - this should be done by entering the password in Acrobat's security properties.

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