"There was an error opening this document. Access denied." when trying to open pdf from OneDrive

Question

I have two OneDrive folders on my laptop: one for my personal account and one for my university account. Whenever I open a PDF file from my university OneDrive or my laptop's local files, it opens completely fine, like normal. But when I try to open any PDF file from my personal OneDrive, it pops up with the message, "There was an error opening this document. Access denied."

All the permissions for the files allow me to open them, and some of them are files I created. It has only started happening recently, despite having worked for a long time before this issue arose.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe Acrobat, and I have signed out and back into my OneDrive, but nothing has worked. If I move the files to my university OneDrive or local files, the file can be opened, it's only when it comes directly from my personal OneDrive. I have tried opening the PDFs on a different computer, and I could access them from my personal OneDrive, so it's specifically this laptop that is experiencing the error.

All the devices I use have up-to-date Windows and Adobe Acrobat. I also don't think there's a sync issue with my OneDrive, as it is only PDF files experiencing issues.

How do I fix this?

Amal. · Answer

Hi there,

Hope you are doing well and thanks for sharing the detailed steps you’ve already tried.

Since the issue only happens when opening PDFs from your personal OneDrive on this specific laptop, it sounds like something on the device is blocking Acrobat’s access to those files, even though permissions are correct.

Here are a few things you can try:

1. Check OneDrive’s File-On-Demand setting

If your personal OneDrive is set to “Online-only” for those PDFs, Acrobat might be unable to open them directly.

Right-click the file in OneDrive → select Always keep on this device → wait for it to fully download → try opening it again.

2. Test with Protected Mode off (for troubleshooting only)

Open Acrobat → Edit > Preferences > Security (Enhanced).
Temporarily disable “Enable Protected Mode at startup” and “Enable Enhanced Security,” then restart Acrobat and try opening the file.
If this works, re-enable these settings after testing and add your OneDrive folder to the Privileged Locations list.

3. Clear OneDrive cache for the personal account

Sign out of your personal OneDrive, close OneDrive completely, then sign back in — this refreshes file access tokens.

4. Test a new folder location

Create a new folder in your personal OneDrive, move one PDF there, sync it fully, and see if it opens. Sometimes, path or sync conflicts cause this.

Here’s the quick step-by-step to add your personal OneDrive folder to Acrobat’s trusted locations:

a.) Find your personal OneDrive folder path

Open File Explorer and go to your personal OneDrive folder.
Right-click it → Properties → copy the path shown in the Location field (e.g., C:\Users\YourName\OneDrive).

b.) Add it as a trusted location in Acrobat

Open Adobe Acrobat.
Go to Edit > Preferences.
In the left panel, select Security (Enhanced).
Under Privileged Locations, click Add Folder Path.
Paste the path you copied from step 1 and click OK.

Close Acrobat completely, reopen it, and try opening the PDF directly from your personal OneDrive folder.

This tells Acrobat to trust that folder completely, which usually resolves the “Access denied” message for synced cloud files, for more information please check the help page https://adobe.ly/4fs0w5b

Let us know how it goes.

~Amal

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