PDF showing as having no security measures, but in fact does

[Victor Warner]

I have come across a PDF file which is showing in PDFX-Change Viewer as having no security measures but which in fact appears to have some. No text is selectable (I believe the text is text and not graphics).

The PDF was generated from this webpage: http://sra.org.uk/solicitors/freedom-in ... e#ofr-qa-b.

On that web page I clicked the "export to PDF" button. The PDF was generated and then I was given the option to download the resulting pdf to my computer.

I opened it in PDFX-Change Viewer (I have the professional version). It is not possible to select text or if the Text tool is used, text is not selected. Going to Document Properties / Security, everything is showing as "allowed" and for Security Method the setting is "No Security".

Opening the same file in Adobe Acrobat Reader 10.1.1 also shows that there is no security measures but some settings are shown as "not allowed" such as Document Assembly. However in Adobe Acrobat I can select all the text (Ctrl-A) and copy it, something which I cannot do in PDFX-Change.

The file is attached.

I would welcome any comments.

[Jamie - Tracker Supp]

Hi Victor,

I have created a ticket to have this investigated by our development team. Ticket # is 1383. We will post here when we have a greater understanding of the challenge.

Regards,
Jamie.

[Lzcat - Tracker Supp]

There is no security on this file.

The Difference in security properties in Adobe products (Acrobat and reader) is beacuse Adobe Reader has limited functionality and cannot perform some operations even if they are allowed.

This document contains only a few portions of text (almost all on diagrams), everything else is drawings, not text. Acrobat may automatically use built-in OCR to deal with such files, but our Viewer does not.

However starting from build 200 the PDf-XChange Viewer has a FREE OCR function module which can be run manually for such files, so you may try and add an invisible text layer using it.

HTH.