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1. Re: How to create a read-only PDF ?
lrosenth Feb 18, 2012 3:27 PM (in response to DHeadrick)You enabled commenting – which is a modification to the document, thus allowing saving. Turn off that option and you won’t allow saving either.
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2. Re: How to create a read-only PDF ?
DHeadrick Feb 18, 2012 4:35 PM (in response to lrosenth)Thanks, Irosenth, for the suggestion. As I mentioned in my post, I downloaded a document from some company's website that appeared to have the features I wanted -- it had all of my permissions (including allowing commenting) yet it doesn't allow saving, neither via the floppy disk Save icon nor via File > Save. That's what I wanted to duplicate.
However, as soon as I added a comment to the downloaded document, both save methods immediately showed up (became ungrayed). So, you're 100% correct -- as long as I allow commenting, Reader and Acrobat will allow the document to be saved after it's been modified.
So, I thought I'd try going outside of Reader/Acrobat and set the Windows property of the file to Read-only (by right-clicking the file in Windows Explorer, selecting Properties, and then checking the Read-only box). Then, after adding a comment to the PDF file and trying to save it, Adobe Acrobat said:
The document could not be saved. The file may be read-only, or another user
may have it open. Please save the document with a different name or in a
different folder.I think this achieves what I want -- the user can't save it (modify it), at least accidentally, which is all I care about. If he wants to go into the Windows property and clear the Read-only box, that's fine. However, because of how I'm using commenting, I don't want him to unintentionally (inadvertently) modify the document.
If you're aware of any possible "unintended consequences" from making the file read-only via Windows, please let me know.
Thanks again for your help!
Dave


