PDFs Randomly Becoming Password Protected

[Steven Gould]

We use Nitro throughout our office. Recently, we will try to open files we've worked on and they are password protected. We didn't password protect them and the files are locked and we can't open them. This is happening randomly on file that are critical. Any idea why this might be happening? Is there a default password that will unlock these files? How do we strip out the password protection when we still need the file? We really need an answer quickly since many of the files are for an upcoming court case. If anyone has run into this and has a fix, please let me know ASAP. Thanks.

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Steven Gould,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums!

Nitro Pro is NOT designed to auto-password protect PDF documents and to further understand this rare behavior, could you please provide the following information?:

-Is this a new issue or has it occurred since after installing Nitro Pro? Any changes you are aware of before this happened (e.g. Windows Updates)?

-How many users reported this rare behavior so far (rough numbers like 5, 10, 15, 50, or more) ? 

-If only few users have encountered this, are they working with the same Windows OS (Windows 8.0, 8.1, 10, or 11 and whether it is 32-bit or 64 bit)?

-What build of Nitro Pro do you have within your organization? You can find this out by clicking on 'About Nitro Pro' under the Help tab (format is 13.XX.X.XXX, e.g. 13.58.0.1180 OR) or you can go to Control Panel > Programs and Features. 

-Are the affected PDF files being pulled from a specific network folder or it is also randomly happening with those that are saved in Documents and Desktop folders?

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[K-Mac]

On 3/9/2022 at 3:39 PM, Allain Umailin said:

I am having the same issue with 9 documents I created to send to clients. I filled in all this data, saved the forms, and now I can't open them or change the password protection. It happened last Friday, March 11th. My answers to your questions is below in Red.

 

Hello @Steven Gould,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums!

Nitro Pro is NOT designed to auto-password protect PDF documents and to further understand this rare behavior, could you please provide the following information?:

-Is this a new issue or has it occurred since after installing Nitro Pro? Any changes you are aware of before this happened (e.g. Windows Updates)? new issue, not aware of any updates. I did update to the most recent version of Nitro yesterday, but this happened last Friday.

-How many users reported this rare behavior so far (rough numbers like 5, 10, 15, 50, or more) ? just me (two other users in the office)

-If only few users have encountered this, are they working with the same Windows OS (Windows 8.0, 8.1, 10, or 11 and whether it is 32-bit or 64 bit)? n/a

-What build of Nitro Pro do you have within your organization? You can find this out by clicking on 'About Nitro Pro' under the Help tab (format is 13.XX.X.XXX, e.g. 13.58.0.1180 OR) or you can go to Control Panel > Programs and Features. 13.58.0.1180 (just updated 3-15-22)

-Are the affected PDF files being pulled from a specific network folder or it is also randomly happening with those that are saved in Documents and Desktop folders? the blank forms were emailed to me, I opened them in Nitro, filled them in, then saved them into a folder in My Docs. When I go into that folder, they are all password protected and I cannot see any of the data.

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

 

 

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @K-Mac,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums with your answers.

Could you please provide the serial number of your Nitro Pro 13?  This matters because our business installers are different from the online ones.

Lastly, is it possible to send over the original blank PDF and the filled one so I can check them on our end?

To send them via private message, hover your mouse on top of my name 'AllainU' and select 'Message'.

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you. 

[K-Mac]

I will message that to you now 😃

[jericson@medrisknet.com]

I am suddenly having same problem.  A subset of PDFs are locked via a password that no one seems to know and did not have or at least did not prompt for a password previously

 

[Diana Park]

Has there been a resolution to this issue?

I noticed that when we download reports from Morningstar, these documents are password protected (not by me), and so I am unable to highlight anything.

thank you

[Gina Space]

I too am having this problem, has there been a resolution?

Thank you,

Gina

[Scott Way]

Our organization has been dealing with this issue as well with no resolution for almost a year, is it possible to disable the password protection all together? I had a document yesterday i sent out to a customer they came back before i had closed the document saying it was password protected, when i checked the security setting it did show password protected and i removed this and it was fine but after it's closed it's too late. Need a solution.

 

We are on version 13.70.4.50

[Keith Miller]

I see this issue has been going on well over a year. 

Is there any plan to find a resolution to this? This issue recently popped up for my wife.   It's a pretty big deal when it's 65 PDFs a day!

The current workaround is to open the pdf then print to pdf which is grossly time consuming. 

Just let me know if I should switch to Adobe?