There was an error opening this document. Access denied.

[green153]

Greetings,

When I did my taxes last year (March 2012), I downloaded some pdf files from the IRS.  Form 1040 was a writable file and I filled it out as needed.  This file was saved on a Vista machine running XP.  A few months ago, I upgraded that pc to be Windows 7 SP1.

Today I'm getting ready to do my taxes for this year.  When I double click on last year's Form1040.pdf, I get the following error message:

There was an error opening this document.  Access denied.

Interestingly, I can open other pdf files, like the Form 1040 Instructions.  I do not think that I password protected my Form1040.pdf.  The reason that I think it isn't password protected is because I'm not being prompted to enter a password.

I copied the file to an old spare XP machine (XP Home, version 2002, SP3) that I have and it opened fine.  It did not prompt for a password.  I printed copies of last year's forms from that XP machine, so this isn't an emergency for me, but it is mildly annoying that I can't figure out what's wrong.

I have Adobe Reader XI version 11.0.2 installed on both machines (the Windows 7 machine and the old XP machine).

To summarize, it was created on Vista, I can't open it with Windows 7, but I can open it with XP.

Normally I would consider uploading the file in question, but in this case, I hope you'll agree that might be a bad idea!

Advice on how to get this to work on Windows 7 would be appreciated.

[pwillener · Accepted solution]

Access denied means that there is some sort of permission problems.  Check the permissions of that file for your user id.

[green153]

Pat Willener:  Thanks!  That solved the problem.

For anyone else having this problem, here's a detailed list of how I used Pat's advice to solve my problem:

1.  Right click on the problematic file

2.  Select Properties

3.  Select the Security tab

4.  Press continue

5.  In the "Permissions for MyFile.pdf" dialog, press "Add".

6.  In the "Select Users or Groups" dialog, press "Advanced".

7.  The next dialog that pops up is also named "Select Users or Groups".  Press "Find Now".

8.  Scroll down the list of search results until you find your username.

9.  Double click on your username.

10. Press ok in the "Select Users or Groups" dialog.

11.  Press ok in the "Permissions for MyFile.pdf" dialog

12. Press ok in the Properties dialog.

done.

[pwillener]

Thank you for the detailed instructions!