Locking down PDFs

[agent006]

Afternoon all,

I'm after a small favour. I've got a word document that needs to go into a format that people can only read and search. No editing, no copying into another document, no word counts etc. Would i be right in saying that Adobe Acrobat can restrict a document to this level?

If it can, would someone be kind eonough to convert the document and impose teh restrictions on it for me please (i'm not with the PC that has my copy of Acrobat on it this week)?

[tommofocus]

Just remember that some other programs that can open PDF's can also ignore the settings for lockdown.

[122.475]

Agent006 said
Afternoon all,

I'm after a small favour. I've got a word document that needs to go into a format that people can only read and search. No editing, no copying into another document, no word counts etc. Would i be right in saying that Adobe Acrobat can restrict a document to this level?

If it can, would someone be kind eonough to convert the document and impose teh restrictions on it for me please (i'm not with the PC that has my copy of Acrobat on it this week)?


If you want to email the file to me i can convert it to a PDF for you

[agent006]

122.475 said:

If you want to email the file to me i can convert it to a PDF for you

Cheers, it's not finished yet, so i'll email you in the week.

[tvrforever]

tommofocus said:

Just remember that some other programs that can open PDF's can also ignore the settings for lockdown.

I can never find one of these when I need one though!

[zumbruk]

There is simply no way to stop someone doing whatever they like once your data is on their computer. A locked down pdf may keep casual twiddlers out, but it won't stop anyone who's determined. There are plenty of pdf to text converters on the 'net (Hell, Adobe themselves will do it for you if you claim you're blind) and if all else fails, you can do a screen grab and run it into an OCR system. Or get someone to retype it ...