I can't paste the password for the protected PDF document

Report · Jul 04, 2019

I get sent a lot of PDF protected sheets on a daily basis. In the same mail that the PDF is attached to I also get sent the password to open the sheet. I used to be able to copy the password from the email body, open the PDF document and paste the password when prompted for the password, but recently when I paste nothing pastes into the password box. I also tried right-clicking selecting copy and then right-clicking the password prompt box and selecting paste to no avail.

Please assist as this is very a very annoying problem.

Regards

Report · Jan 02, 2020

I was able to fix this issue. Try this... From the Adobe Menu select Edit --> Preferances.. When the Preferances window pops up select Security (Enhanced) on the left and remove the check from Enable Protected Mode at startup and Enable Enhanced Security.

Obviously this may disable some security protections but we can now paste passwords directly from emails.

Report · Jan 02, 2020

Good to know that and thanks for sharing that.

The issue with security still remains though. Adobe might have to come up with something to provide both security and the ability of copying and pasting to an email app.

Report · Jan 03, 2020

Thanks for this.

You can however leave Enable Enhanced Security checked and you are still able to paste in passwords.

Having played around with this, it appears that after unchecking Enable Protected Mode on Startup, restarting Adobe, then ticking this again, I am now able to paste in passwords. Therefore the settings are as before. Selecting/deselecting Protected View and Privileged locations has no effect either.

Others may have a different outcome but it would be good to know if this works for all users/files.

Report · Jan 06, 2020

Thank you so much for this. Initial testing has shown that just unchecking "Enable Protected Mode on Startup" fixes the problem. If I then go back in and check it again, whilst the paste option is active and available, it will not actually paste in the content. So we will have to run with this unchecked if we are going to allow the pasting of formatted text passwords. We will do some more extensive testing over the next few days but this certainly looks to have solved the problem.

Report · Dec 06, 2021

Hello. I started having this issue in late November 2021. I have always been able to copy and paste my passwords into new documents or those already protected. It has been very frustrating. However, I decided to check the Adobe Support Community and saw the solution from "numonex" from 01.02.2020. I followed the instructions and it worked. Yeah! Thank you so much.

I still don't know why this happened. I have an HP Laptop that is only a few months old, and have Windows 10. I have a subscription with Adobe to "Adobe Acrobat Pro DC" Version 2021.007.20099. I don't know when the latest automatic update happened. I wonder if that is when this annoying change happened.

Thanks again!

Report · Jan 06, 2022

Instead of disabling Protected Mode altogether, disabling "Run in AppContainer" will also work (just tested it).

Edit | Preferences | Security (Enhanced) | Sandbox protections > Uncheck "Run in AppContainer".

This was discovered by someone here:

I can't paste in the password input field – Share your feedback on Acrobat DC (uservoice.com)

Report · Jan 08, 2022

Hi Aakash123. I tried your suggestion and it worked for me as well. Sounds like you recommend this method over the one that I had tried. As such, I will keep yours! Thank you so much for your help.