When a PDF document is protected with a security policy from Adobe LiveCycle ES or Adobe AEM Forms, it can only be opened by Adobe Reader. Here's what it looks like when you try to open it in another PDF viewer.
Microsoft Edge:
Firefox (internally uses PDF.js):
But I have seen secured PDF documents that in other viewers show customised instructions to download and install Adobe Reader. Obviously there is a way to add unprotected content to protected PDF files, that other PDF viewers will display. How can I do it?
Here's an example of a PDF file I'm talking about.
When opened in Adobe Reader:
When opened in Firefox:
I also posted this question on Adobe forums, and someone replied with the correct answer there. AEM Forms has a feature that allows to add cover page to a policy-protected document: https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AEMForms/6.1/RMHelp/WS2d2a17056e219198-31ba356e14172797744-8000.html
I believe the only way to do what you are asking would be to supply the 'custom content' during initial authoring of the PDF with Adobe LiveCycle ES for instance.
(How this is accomplished may be similar to how it works for dynamic XFA content where the page contains some content that non-XFA compliant readers can fallback on to display instead of just erring out.)
But I think the only way to add such content to an existing PDF using non-Adobe software would involve violating the Rights Managment policy the author intended, which is not something you want to do.
Related
I would like to ask the following if possible. We have a client that wants a separate pdf document, embedded in a main pdf document and opens when you click it. Like the function in MS Word where you can attach another Word document inside a Word document (Word-ception, lol) and you can still open it.
I've tried it in Acrobat Pro with the Attachment and Link tools. Another option was to put the link document in an ftp server for accessibility. but our client really wants this functionality. Is this possible in Indesign?
Thank you!
Using Word as your example vehicle there are several ways to link 2 documents.
One is an appendix to the other, in PDF terms is a merge or binding but its one flowing document with separate sequential sections/chapters.
Another way is to link to an external file, in PDF terms a hyperlink to a relative second file, which can be locally folder relative or a web absolute reference. You have tried that.
In Word we can add objects internally with icons, in PDF that can be an annotation comment attachment to save externally and action accordingly. You also seem to discount that approach.
Finally PDF offers an Adobe Specific Structure where multiple PDFs attachments can be imbedded in an overall PDF wrapper. These are called Portfolios and not! to be confused with their portfolio service
They are unpopular since in a browser without Adobe Reader they should only offer the cover page.
Whilst in securer offline readers the files may well be shown as attachments that you need to save or independently open to view them.
Only some non Acrobat viewers may view them as a collection. And in the past that required runing insecure SWFlash, But I understand that has changed ?
Here is how the 3 internal PDF files seen above were shown in older Acrobat 9.
Possibly the best experience is using Foxit Reader
I am having issue to view XFA PDF in Google chrome. I am able to open the same PDF in Acrobat reader but when I view in chrome I get “Please wait...” message.
Can you please let me know if there is any solution to fix this issue?
The XML Forms Architecture is deprecated in ISO 32000-2 (released in 2017). One of the reasons for deprecation was the fact that adoption of XFA was poor. This wasn't a problem when Adobe Reader had a high penetration, but it became problematic with the advent of pdf.js, Chrome's PDF viewer, Microsoft's PDF viewer, etc. None of those viewers supported XFA. Instead of rendering the XML stream, they just render the single (static) PDF page that is usually stored inside an XFA document. PDF renders much quicker than XML, and the static PDF page saying "Please wait..." was there to bridge the gap between opening the document and rendering the XML in Adobe Reader. It's also the page that is shown by PDF viewers who don't support XFA. Those viewers know how to render the PDF part of the form, but they don't know how to parse the XFA stream.
To make a long story short: there is no fix for your issue. Google Chrome doesn't support XFA, and as XFA is deprecated, Google Chrome won't support XFA in the future either.
There might be a workaround if you are allowed to flatten the form. For instance: XFA is often used as a templating format.
The template defines what a final document has to look like.
XML data is merged into the template.
The XFA template with the data is flattened to an ordinary PDF document.
Once an XFA form is flattened to an ordinary PDF document, the document is no longer interactive. No data can be entered; all interactivity is gone. There is no XFA XML stream inside the document anymore.
There are two products that can flatten an XFA form: Adobe LC Enterprise Suite, and iText's pdfXFA add-on. Both of these products are closed source, commercial products.
With the latest Adobe PDF smart forms, following are my questions:
1) Could the PDF form itself detect or be aware of what client software itself is opened with?
2) When a PDF form is opened inside a browser plugin, could the script on the form read from browser cookies? and also could the script on the form write into browser cookies?
Thanks for the info.
"latest smart forms"… this has been done for the last 15 years…
To 1): The first distinction is to make whether the PDF viewer used understands (Acrobat) JavaScript.
If not, your smart form will remain dumb, and there is nothing you can change (if the viewer allows submitting data, you could do a server-side data processing and form filling and return the filled PDF to the client).
If the PDF viewer understands (Acrobat) JavaScript, you have the possibility to test for the kind of viewer, its version, as well whether it is external (which means whether you view the form under a web browser). See the Acrobat JavaScript documentation (which is part of the Acrobat SDK, downloadable from the Adobe website).
To 2): The answer is simple: no. This is not allowed (and implemented) for security reasons.
Hope this can help.
Max Wyss.
I'm using the Adobe Acrobat PDF Viewer ActiveX (AxAcroPDFLib.AxAcroPDF) control in one of my forms to display Controlled Document PDFs and my customer would like end users to not be able to print these documents. Is there anyway to disable printing through this control?
The PDF format supports permissions and "allow printing" is one of the permissions. If you can control the PDF generation of these controlled PDFs your best bet is to disable the allow print permission for users. You can also even run existing PDFs through a conversion process to add the necessary permissions with iText, ghostscript or something similar.
Besides, even if you are able to to disable the print button on the ActiveX viewer, if the user is clever enough to realize it is merely a PDF, they could just download the PDF and print it normally.
There's a new PDF software that does this by default. You would have to save the document as .wwf rather than .pdf. If the document is already in PDF format you can re-save it in WWF format.
It's provided by the World Wildlife Foundation in an effort to reduce paper use. The end user does not need to have the software installed on their computer for it to work. You can download the software for both MAC or PC from the link below. Hope this helps!
http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/
I'm a converting my Word document into pdf using the built-in microsoft office converter (save as--> pdf).
I want my pdf to be protected (users cannot copy text from it). i can't seem to find any options for this when converting to pdf.
Any hint?
Thanks.
Found it, Can be done with Adobe Acrobat Professional, not the Acrobat Reader.
PDF, or portable document format, forms were created by Adobe as a form of universal file format. Adobe Acrobat Reader, which allows you to view PDF files, is available for free download. Unfortunately, to manipulate documents and perform functions like changing security settings, you must have the full Adobe Acrobat software. With it, you can create secure PDFs, but you can also change security settings on PDF forms.
You can use export to PDF feature in LibreOffice, just set permission password and then disable Content Copying.