computer question - adobe .pdf protected file - how can I copy it?

I have a .pdf file that seems to have some sort of encryption on it. I want to copy it from my PC and move it to my mac, but I can’t copy it to a cd, I can’t mail it, and I’ve tried winzipping it and mailing it, and it wouldn’t allow that either.

Looking at the properties of the files, Read-only is not checked. I can’t see any obvious things to change, but when I try to copy it, it tells me that the file is read only.

Anyone know of an app out there that I can run against this thing and strip off whatever is keeping me from accessing it? I have googled this already, and every suggestion, including the command line options, have failed as well.

Thanks

There’s no way that I know of that a pdf can be “copy protected.” It’s possible to make them uneditable, but that’s a different story. I’m not knowledgeable enough about Windows to know how to fix this problem, but I would guess it has something to do with ownership.

If it’s stored as a file on your hard drive, there is no way to prevent it from being copied by system-level tools. Is it a file on your hard drive?

ETA: Are you sure some app isn’t holding it open? Try closing it first.

Yes, it is a file on my hard drive, and it isn’t open anywhere. I can see it on my hard drive, I can open it with adobe, and when I do, at the top of the adobe window it says “protected”. I can, interestingly enough move it around my own hard drive, including making copies. It’s almost like it has sole hard drive specific privileges only.

I don’t get this one. Can the file itself be encrypted, or maybe something in my registry?

If you can make copies on your hard drive, why can’t you make copies on another drive? Floppy? CD? What happens when you try?

AFAIK, the system doesn’t care or know what kind of file it is or what it contains when it copies/moves it. Once you open it with an app, it’s a different story.

How about changing the name and/or type/extension? Does that make anything different?

Can you copy it at the DOS level?

Can you restart in Safe Mode and try to copy it that way?

How did you receive the file?

There is a Windows facility called WRM which can be applied to any file, not just music. If you got the file from Corporate, it could be locked down in any number of ways that WILL be enforced by all applications and the OS.

All the advice of the previous posters would be invalid IF the file had full up Windows Rights Management running.

You could try opening it, then saving it as a different file and try moving that one. Failing that, print it to a pdf file (use a utility like Bullzip if you don’t have that capability already), and move THAT file.

Get Foxit and try that

its smaller, faster, and half a billion times more versatile than adobe.
that and it might ignore whatever adobe related crap is on there. I have used it many many times to alter pdfs that “cannot” be altered and saved and after altering them…I saved them.

great little program

I don’t know why it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t. When I try to copy it to another drive, floppy or CD, it won’t do it, and gives me the error that it’s a read-only file. When I check the properties of the file, it has the read only box unchecked.

No. In fact, I can’t get rid of the pdf extension. It will let me change the name of the file, add a .gif extension, and it’s still recognized as a pdf.

no

Tried this, and it still won’t allow anything. It’s almost if renaming the file has no affect on the behavior of the file at all.

I received the file from a cd. I copied it to my hard drive. I then tried to recopy the file from the cd with the command xcopy, with no success.

There are multiple levels of PDF DRM (digital right management) tools some of whichwill do exactly what what you are describing. If it’s on a work PC you had best be sure this is OK before proceeding as some companies consider breaking in house documents DRM a firing offense.

Google “remove pdf drm”.

Welcome to the world where corporations own your hardware. Not yours, sucker.

Format your harddrive and sue them for infecting your OS with a rootkit. Alternatively, try booting from a Linux CD and see if you can handle the file from there.

SFP, are you working in a corporate environment? It’s entirely possible that your rights have been compromised for the greater good of all mankind. If so, would your tech support dept. lend a hand?

You said you were able to copy it from a CD. Then can you attach it to an email from the same CD?

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I haven’t tried them all, but I will get back to you all with an update when I’ve had a chance to try some of the suggestions here.

Here’s the background on the file itself. I purchased a technical manual that I needed from a publisher. I needed it for my mac, since I rarely use my dying pc. I didn’t know that the file could only be downloaded to my pc. Even though it is an adobe pdf file, when i put it in my mac it doesn’t recognize it. So clearly, there is something that is specific to the PC and there seems to be some sort of drm on it, as astro suggests. I have not been able to research that much as of yet, but that would make sense based on how it’s behaving.

I called the publisher last week (before posting this plea for help) and asked if they produced a disk I could use on my mac. They don’t. I also asked if there was any sort of encryption on the disk or the file that would keep me from writing it to a cd and then moving it to my mac. No, they said. They offered to refund my money, but I need the manual, so I declined. I also asked them if there was any problem with me doing what I was trying to do, and was told that since I bought the manual, it was mine and if I wanted to view it on a mac, that would be fine. Of course, since I can’t do it, it doesn’t do me much good!

Actually, the publisher was pretty nice, but had no solution. And I guess they are so small that they aren’t losing too much business to the mac owner. It was pretty expensive, so the offer for the refund was appreciated, but like I said, I need the thing so I will view it on my pc until I figure this out.

This chaps my buttocks.

Check your email. :slight_smile:

Well, if you’re willing to take stabs in the dark, things to try include:

When it’s open in the Adobe software, see if it lets you do a Save As… a copy might work if the original doesn’t. If it lets you print, you could try printing it to a driver that renders it as a .pdf and generate a brand new pdf that way.

Mess around with the original file in various ways. Try renaming the extension to .txt or .jpg instead of pdf and then copying that, and then renaming it to .pdf on the Mac if it copied. If that doesn’t work, if it’s as a txt file you might be able to open it in a word processor and look at the code, then copy and past the code into another text document, then save that – renaming it to a .pdf extension when you’re ready to go. I’ve also sometimes been able to loo at the inner PDF code and tear things out manually to get them to do what I want, usually in cases of corrupted files.

Sometimes the system level file settings are confused. You say the red only checkbox is unchecked. Well, check it, so it explicitly knows it’s locked, test it, then uncheck it to explicitly know to unlock it. It’s just forcing it to change the flag bit in case it’s confused.

Oh, and if the PC has an OS where you need to be an admin to do certain things, make sure you’re signed in on an admin account.

When you say the Mac doesn’t recognize it once it’s there, how do you mean that? You mean if you double click it it doesn’t open automatically in Adobe or anything else? That’s a common problem with files transferred from PCs anyway. You can try opening the application and then choosing File->Open and picking the path to the file once inside there, so it knows it’s supposed to be a PDF. It’s also possible the version of Acrobat reader, or the alernate progrm you are using (Preview, whatever) just can’t handle the PDF version, so make sure you have the most recent release of the Acrobat Reader (which they may have changed the name of if I recall correctly – just check on the ADobe site until you see the free app that reads the files).

I know some of this was suggested above, but, hey, stream of consciousness.

Well, I’ve been unsuccessful with everything so far. What I did discover is that the pdf file is encrypted by something from FileOpen Publisher, and the encryption occurs in a plug-in script in the acrobat reader.

any other ideas?

What I mean is that when I put the disk into my mac, the mac doesn’t recognize anything on the disk. I can’t double-click on anything because the disk can’t even be read by my mac.