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Topic: Secured PDFs won't open in browsers using reader 4.0 or 5.0
Conf: (P-PDF) Acrobat 6.0, Msg: 113754
From: dwiltshire
Date: 6/19/2004 05:10 AM

Acrobat Professional 6.0.2 on Windows NT.

I create PDFs with password security for posting on the web. If the website visitor has Acrobat 6 or Reader 6 installed on their machine, the document opens fine when they click the link to view the file. However, if the machine has Reader 4 or 5, it throws an error message:

"Session window AcroRd32.exe application error"
"The instruction at 0x004e14a7 referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be read. Click on OK to terminate the application."

... and of course the file doesn't open.

When generating the PDF, I did select "Acrobat 3.0 and later" under Document | Security | Restrict Opening and Editing. I set a permissions password to allow printing, but not editing. I do not require a password to open the document so I did not check that box.

If the visitor right-clicks and downloads the file, they can then open it in Reader 4.0/5.0 on their desktop. But they can never view the document directly in the browser.

The server is not using SiteMinder security, as one Adobe support document suggested might cause problems -- although the problem this addresses isn't exactly the same. Also tried saving as "Optimized".

If possible, I'd like to maintain some backward-compatibility. The existing files, created in Acrobat 4.0 with the same password security, all open in the browser window without any problems. Am I overlooking an important compatibility setting?

Thanks in advance!

Dan