Adobe Acrobat Reader on my Mac Book Pro M1 with OS Sonoma 14.4.1

[Guy37426453agwo]

I download from my bank here in Canada my statements that are in a PDF format with a zillion security restrictions that do not allow me to fill & sign and annotate.  My bank was acquired by Royal Bank of Canada and previously my former bank, I was able to fill, sign and annote the PDF files.  it seems pretty clear to me that Adobe with their AI Assistant that now shows up on their document that Adobe is on a cash grab and trying to force you to buy a version that would allow me to make some annotations to the PDF files.  I prefer to use the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader considering the limited use that I use Adobe for.

Is there a way around this current problem that I am facing? 

N.B. there is a way I found to get around this but it involves another manual step that I teke by printing the actual PDF document and scanning it with Adobe Acrobat reader as a PDF document and this file ends up without very little security restrictions as I had experienced before.  My preference is to do all of this electronically without handling any hard copy paper.

A sincere thank you to all the good people that are willing to help.

[Abambo]

Your post is full of information that is not useful to solve your problem. If I understand you correctly, the PDF file you get from your bank cannot be annotated. Please post a screenshot of the security applied:

(Command-D, go to the security tab)

[Guy37426453agwo]

Dear Abambo,

I selected one of my recent statement that had about 4 pages and opened the document properties in File.  I have attached a screenshot as you requested.  Trust this will help!

Guy 🙏