I regularly use PDFs created by other firms. These are fillable forms that can be saved, printed, etc. When I send them to others for signature, the clients are unable to open them or sign them. Some investigation revealed that the forms are password protected. The firms that send me the forms insist they are not adding any password protection at their end and it appears that my paid version of Adobe Acrobat DC is doing it. Is this possible? How do I stop it from happening? Any way of knowing what password my Adobe Acrobat is using for security?
Thanks, Scott
TOPICS
PDF forms
,
Security digital signatures and esignatures
My docs that I create are being automatically given a password also. It is the name of the first password I set up for the first document that I added security to. Fortunately I remember the password. Each and every document I create (eg by just saving a word doc to a pdf ) has this same password automatically saved . I have to manually go in and remove the password and sometimes it takes more than one try to remove it. Any ideas how to help this?
Thank you for reaching out and reporting this issue.
Could you please confirm how you are creating PDFs? Share the complete steps.
Did you check if it happens with the PDF created from a particular source? Try to make a new PDF from a notepad or a text file and check if you experience the same behavior.
Since Acrobat doesn't do this, take a look at the file as you first receive it - check if there is a password. Be sure you are checking with File > Properties > Security, not any other way.
Thanks for the replies. It's the oddest thing. All I do is receive the forms, open them, and then enter new information in the fields that are permitted. I don't change any of the settings or permissions. Creators insist there should be no security settings on the files, yet this is the second time that I cannot request signatures because of a password protection. I've tried Acrobat DC and Reader DC and the result is the same. I can go into Security and try to make changes to the permissions, but it then asks for the password. Neither I, nor the file creator, have a clue what the password is or why it's been requested.
So, if the file you get - before you change it - says it has a password, then it has a password. It's not your problem to get rid of it - because you don't know it! You are checking BEFORE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING, right?
Correct. I asked them to resend a blank form. I opened it and it still asked for a password. This is a form that is used by hundreds of users across Canada, though, so someone else would have noticed if they were having trouble with a security permission. The creator says they haven't encountered this issue before.
Thanks for the replies. It's the oddest thing. All I do is receive the forms, open them, and then enter new information in the fields that are permitted. I don't change any of the settings or permissions. Creators insist there should be no security settings on the files, yet this is the second time that I cannot request signatures because of a password protection. I've tried Acrobat DC and Reader DC and the result is the same.
Thanks for the replies. It's the oddest thing. All I do is receive the forms, open them, and then enter new information in the fields that are permitted. I don't change any of the settings or permissions. Creators insist there should be no security settings on the files, yet this is the second time that I cannot request signatures because of a password protection. I've tried Acrobat DC and Reader DC and the result is the same.
Yes. And I asked the creator to send me a blank form to look at. As soon as I received it, I opened it and checked the security permissions and it was password protected. That clearly suggests that the creator is adding the password; however, this is a large Canadian insurance company that works with 1000s of advisors across the country and certainly someone would have noticed this before. The creator says this is the first instance of someone not being able to send the form out for signature using AdobeSign on account of a password protection.
Or perhaps others are not using Adobe Sign to send for signature. Without knowing the form, it's hard to say whether the common use is to get others to sign it.
Can you share the form here? (Without personal entries, of course...)
If you can, please try and share it both as you receive it before opening it in Acrobat and as it is after you have filled it in in Acrobat.
By the way, you don't happen to be protected by an innovative firewall or email filter the PDF form passes through, do you? While (as far as I know) not common, it is possible that such firewalls or filters manipulate documents going through in a way to restrict them to prevent harmful active contents.
My Acrobat also does this and it is causing huge problems. In my case, the form in question has been used many times without problem. Forms are filled by me and sent out for signing. When we receive them back and try to combine them with other documents, suddenly they are password protected and can't be merged. I have no idea what the password is; I've never used the password feature on any documents. Neither I nor the signatory took any steps to add a password. As I said, this has caused a lot of problems. It's annoying to see replies state so confidently that Acrobat does not do this. I assure you that in some cases at least, it does.
You've answered your own query. The files are not password-protected, but they are locked because they were digitally signed. This prevents editing them, including merging them with other files (except as a part of a Portfolio), per definition.
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