Can't save PDFs

Report · Feb 01, 2016

Why can't I save PDFs to my PC anymore? Whether in Reader or Acrobat Pro DC, the save button is grayed out. HELP

I have never had a problem saving PDFs to any PC. Now with some apparent move to the cloud, I no longer have the option to save. Why have a save button that is grayed out? I have tried Reader, I downloaded a trial of Acrobat Pro DC to see if that made a difference, but no. I cannot find any option within Adobe's menus to simply "Save" or "Save as" and save the PDF to my PC. It should not be this hard!!!

[Title edited for brevity and clarity by moderator. Original title moved to first paragraph.]

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Report · Feb 01, 2016

Hi ,

The save button is grayed out until you make any changes to the PDFs.

When changes are made to the PDF for the first time, the file will have to be SavedAs.

Making subsequent changes to the file in the same Reader instance will allow Save.

You could restart your machine one and then relaunch Reader/Acrobat and then see.

Regards

Sukrit Dhingra

Report · Feb 01, 2016

I have nothing to edit - I want to save a PDF that was emailed to me. Why in the world does that functionality no longer exist? And apparently you have to pay to edit...so you're telling me there is no other way to save PDFs that I have no intention of editing"?

Report · Feb 01, 2016

Hi ,

It seems like you are on Reader and that does not let you edit a PDF.

If that was emailed to you ,you must have downloaded the PDF and it would be automatically saved.

Regards

Sukrit Dhingra

Report · Feb 01, 2016

Never said I wanted to edit a PDF file. I want to take ANY PDF and select "Save as" and save to wherever I want, including my hard drive or OneDrive. It does not "automatically save" because it isn't on my computer and has no idea where I want it saved. Why is the "save as" functionality not available anymore?

Report · Feb 25, 2016

Having the exact same issue. Adobe automatically downloaded the new version. Now when I download a pdf it opens in 2014.010.20056. THe save button is grayed out so I cannot save the document to my computer. I poked around online and found that I should uncheck "Show online storage when saving files" and I was able to save files again. Now a few days later I open another pdf and cannot save it to my MAC but save is grayed out again. It is maddening that I can download files but not save them. PLEASE FIX STANDARD ADOBE READER CONFIG TO ALLOW THE USER TO SAVE A DOCUMENT.

Report · Mar 13, 2016

Why the changes? I can't save a PDF to my computer either. It's a score report from a website I need to send in. Thank you for making these changes. They really are screwing us!

Report · Apr 02, 2016

Can someone answer this greyed out problem is causing a problem with my biz and it is frustrating! Idon't need to edit my legal forms for contracts but yet Adobe is not letting me "save as" file like I use to. HELP ADOBE with this issue!!! Ido not want to save these on cloud I want saved on my computer. I have a mac, but I hear windows is having same issue.

Report · May 04, 2016

Has an answer been provided to this critical question? I have a Real Estate business... need to save files to my computer and be able to attach to an email. THIS IS CRITICAL!! Please help!!!

Need to SAVE and SAVE AS without editing

Report · May 04, 2016

Choose “Save As” from the File Menu. A window opens up showing your recent folders or you can “Choose a different folder”.

Good luck.

Neil

Report · May 04, 2016

When opening the files in a browser, be sure you are not using Chrome/Edge/Firefox. They have their own pdf viewers which may or may not have "Save as".

If you want to use those browsers, you need to right-click on the link to the pdf file and choose to save it. Then open it in Acrobat Reader or attach it to your email.

Report · Sep 13, 2016

Thanks, but still the question not being answered: why could we do save and save as when already have the pdf document opened (pdf viewer) before and now those buttons are grayed out and cannot do save or save as anymore?

Report · Apr 09, 2016

I sympathise totally. You can save to the cloud but how do you retrieve files from the cloud and then save them to your computer or attach them to emails?

Doesn't anyone from Adobe read this forum??

Report · Jun 23, 2016

Any sort of update on this issue/bug/annoyance?

We have Acrobat Pro DC, version 2015.016. As of approximately 2 weeks ago, the option to "SAVE AS" is grayed out on the File menu. There is no error, the screen does not hang, has nothing to do with editing the document. Simply, we have a pdf document open, we would like to save a copy of it. In Acrobat 7, we can click on FILE, select SAVE AS, and save the document where we want. In DC Pro, the SAVE AS function is grayed out. The keyboard short Shift-CTRL-S will work. Why is the "SAVE AS" button grayed out and what update happened in the last few weeks that did this?

Report · Aug 06, 2016

Thank you for that tip Shift-CTRL-S. Really helped. What also works is if you were emailed the PDF then you can just save as from the email. But this way is better. THANK YOU!!!

Report · Sep 13, 2016

In my case, I'm using Acrobat Adobe Reader DC, and the keyboard short Shift-CTRL-S is not working either...

Report · Aug 09, 2016

One of our users suffered this same issue for a while. We finally found the culprit. A plugin from Watchdox that removes the "Save as" option from the File Menu. Once we killed that process and prevented it from starting during boot, the "Save as" options is available again. There are probably many other pdf protection plugins that disable the save as so it's a good place to check for issues.

Report · Sep 13, 2016

Thanks... Where and how can we find and change those options about protection plugins like "watchdox" and solve this problem??

Report · Oct 25, 2016

From another thread, which worked for me:

Acrobat Reader/Preferences/General/uncheck box for "show online storage when saving files"/ok

Report · Sep 11, 2017

thanks

good simple advice

worked a treat

Report · Oct 25, 2016

Hello everyone,

You need not to disable our custom save as dialog from the preferences.

We have fixed similar issues in our latest release on 11th Oct,2016.

So just update our product via Help-> Check for updates... and let us know if it works.

-Thanks

Sunil Soni

Report · Jan 10, 2017

Hello everyone,

I recently took over my ex-coworker's PC and had the same problem. I could not figure out why I was not able to 'save' or 'save as' any type of PDF file so I ended up in this forum. I tried downloading the software again (like it was suggested) and it worked once but some reason it reverted back to not allowing me to 'save' or 'save as'. As you can imagine I was frustrated! I decided to click around again and found that if I right click the attachment from the email - it works!!!!

Report · Jun 15, 2017

That didn't work for me. The message indicated I had the most updated version.

It sounds like there is no answer coming forth!??

File>Save As> and the screen opens to where you would normally select the location of where you wanted to save the document. Now, it's an empty box. This just started yesterday with my system.

Can you please address this issue with more detail or several options to try?

Kris

Report · Jun 15, 2017

Go to Edit - Preferences - General and disable "Show online storage when saving files".

Report · Jun 16, 2017

I figured it out myself. Under the Help tab, I selected "Repair Installation"

Kris