Hello, I have a PDF file that has had a password put on it. I can view it but cannot print, resave, edit, convert, etc. My customer had an ex employee who produced the pdf, the password was not passed on, cannot be found. I am told that this pdf file is not accessible because of the password and the restrictions put on it when it was produced. There must be a way to unlock the password protected secure pdf file. It was made with adobe acrobat distiller 6 and was distilled with a security password applied. Please Help, this file is very important, is there a way to unlock the file, how can I do that, or who can unlock it for me?
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*this anonymous user account is used to post prepress forums user and customer inquiries for others to see and respond to.

Oh man, been there, the encryption of pdf files, limiting usage is like any security feature, really a problem when you forget or don't know the password. This has been a big problem for a long time but is a very coveted feature of pdf documents. As far as I know, if you cannot open and view without password, you are not going to get there. But if you can open it, you can then get the rest of priveleges. I'm just helping here and bear no responsibility for success, failure, or anything else, this is just info. I also must say that I would provide this info to your customer and let him do it. If he doesn't really own the file, let him be the party opening files he does not own. In case his rights are not clear, I would not get involved as it's not right to go around cracking PDF files. There are a couple of methods, here's what I know of:

(1) PDFKey Pro is a shareware utility - PDFKey Pro completely removes, without altering in any way the original content, the restrictions imposed with an owner password from PDF files, giving you back all printing and editing capabilities without having to remember the password. PDFKey Pro also allows batch processing of multiple files and entire directories. If the file is protected for simple viewing as well, PDFKey Pro must be provided with the correct viewing password in order to generate an unencrypted file. PDFKey Pro Download

(2) Advanced PDF Password Recovery - This program (Advanced PDF Password Recovery, or simply APDFPR) can be used to decrypt protected Adobe Acrobat PDF files, which have "owner" password set, preventing the file from editing (changing), printing, selecting text and graphics (and copying them into the Clipboard), or adding/changing annotations and form fields (in any combination). Decryption is being done instantly. Decrypted file can be opened in any PDF viewer (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader) without any restrictions -- i.e. with edit/copy/print functions enabled. The program is also able to convert Kinko's Document Format (KDF) files to PDF files (without any protection).

Please note that APDFPR does not work with documents which have user-level passwords (preventing the files from being opened), if both user and owner passwords are unknown.

Professional edition also allows to search for "owner" and "user" passwords with brute-force and dictionary attacks, effectively optimized for speed (however, don't expect to recover long passwords in a resonable time with these attacks). In addition, it has Key search attack, which guarantees the decryption (regardless the password length and complexity) of PDF files that use 40-bit encryption (the attack takes about 3-4 days on modern dual-CPU systems).

Warning: APDFPR APDFPR Pro do NOT work on Mac computers with Virtual PC; unfortunately, it seems to be a problem of Virtual PC itself. Also, PDF files protected with any 3rd party security plug-ins such as FileOpen (FOPN_fLock) are not supported. Advanced PDF Password Recovery
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Interests: adobe acrobat 8 pro, acrobat 8 professional, acrobat 8 standard, acrobat 8.0, acrobat 8.0 professional, acrobat connect, acrobat exe pdf forum, graphic design forum.

I am thinking of deleting this post because it borders on hacking. There are more illegitimate reasons to "unlock" an encrypted pdf file, than legitimate. PDF allows us to secure documents and I don't think this is a good thing to promote. But, I must admit that I have needed to open locked PDF files that I myself forgot the passwords to. So, I don't know. Any opinions on whether to delete this post? Please advise.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Wind Turbine Buyer's Guide


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I have to agree with JP on this. Hacking open a secure PDF is not cool, but at the same time the only time I have needed to open a locked PDf was completely legitimate. It's as easy as locking yourself out of the house, or your car. There are cases where the legitimate party, owner of the document, or a person trying to help them need to get into a secured PDF file. I'm not sure that having security features in PDF aren't more harm than good. Doesn't it in fact create more problems than it solves. Most of us using PDF every day simply don't need security in PDF files. Only time we see it some poor bastard has locked himself out of his own damn documents.
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Interests: adobe acrobat 8 pro, acrobat 8 professional, acrobat 8 standard, acrobat 8.0, acrobat 8.0 professional, acrobat connect, acrobat exe pdf forum, graphic design forum.

I am thinking of deleting this post because it borders on hacking. There are more illegitimate reasons to "unlock" an encrypted pdf file, than legitimate. PDF allows us to secure documents and I don't think this is a good thing to promote. But, I must admit that I have needed to open locked PDF files that I myself forgot the passwords to. So, I don't know. Any opinions on whether to delete this post? Please advise.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

--
Wind Turbine Buyer's Guide


.