PDF Files

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Is it possible to edit .pdf files? Thanks.

Farmer

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You can make minor edits with the full Acrobat product from Adobe, but this is very expensive.

StuartR

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Hi Farmer

The whole idea of a .pdf is that it cannot be edited (by anyone other than the originator).
This enables you to elecronically distribute Price Lists, Cataloges, Illustrations, Quotes, etc, ie: documents that could be big trouble to you if altered.
Once .pdf’s can be altered by anyone, their reason for being disappears and thousands of individuals and companies shut down their websites and withdraw their electronic documents such as listed above ….. and Adobe considers Chapter 11.
If you are the originator of the .pdf, your software should allow you to edit it as you wish.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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Thank’s for the reply. So, presumably, if I had the full Adobe Acrobat Reader I could alter any .pdf which I had created, but no one elses?

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Nope….Not Acrobat Reader
What you would need is Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat is listed at $220.00 USD, or there abouts, on several internet sites.

Acrobat Reader allows you to search, read print, etc. .pdf files…….but not originate nor edit them.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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The following is from Adobe site.
Secure and digitally sign Adobe PDF documents
Prevent confidential information from ending up in the wrong hands. Secure your documents to prevent people from viewing, printing, or altering them. Determine instantly if your documents have been altered for any reason.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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No.
You can alter any PDF, unless the creator has password protected the file against changes.

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What are you trying to do?

The PDF format is a “open” format, meaning that anyone can use it. I created a new document in Notepad, typed Hello World. into it and printed it to PDF using pdfFactory from FinePrint Software. I then opened it in Adobe Acrobat Business Tools 4 and (1)

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A few years ago, I was paid to write a specification for an implementation based on Acrobat.
I was punished by having to read the specs for PDF 3 and 4. I have not looked at the spec for PDF 5,

As a spec, they are not well written, making it difficult, based solely on info in the spec, to produce a true”standard” PDF implementation.

IMHO, compatibility with Acrobat Reader is the highest priority. For this reason, I always recommend purchasing Acrobat, rather than a PDF writer from some 3rd party, or even using the free Ghostscript PDF writer.

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Of course Stuart, Dave and jscher are right…….some .pdf files can be edited.

However, it’s been my experience that pdf files you find on web sites, or are emailed to you as business documents, will be thoroughly protected.
If protection from alteration is not important, the file can be made available on a website or emailed without converting to .pdf and requiring the recipient to have a .pdf reader.

At least that’s my understanding……if there are other good uses for .pdf, please suggest a few…..I have paid for and registered a copy of Acrobat and so far have used it only to produce business documents that I don’t want altered (at least not easily).

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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if there are other good uses for .pdf, please suggest a few…..

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I sometimes need to make sure that the pagination of a document won’t change if I send it to someone with a different printer, especially if I am preparing something for a print shop. Acrobat is very good for this.

StuartR

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If you do not send the PDF, does that mean you send, say, the Word doc?

That”s less desireable for a number of reasons.
1. It increases the chance that you will have n different variations floating around.
2. A PDF document will print identically for everybody, not so with a Word document.

IMHO, Word is a poor format for document distribution. That’s what PDF is for.
Acrobat Reader is free for all platforms.

Note: I rarely modify PDF documents, but I do distribute most documents, e.g., invoices, proposals, and contracts in PDF, with maximum securiy, i.e., just allowing printing.

I also use PDF to compare documents. I like the way Acrobat handles comparing docs better than Word.

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There is a Acrobat Reader for most platforms, which means that they can read your files. All platforms can NOT read ALL file types. I am involved with genealogy and I have several contacts that are on those Mac’s and have older versions of Word. They have problems in reading the standard doc files, so I had to make RTF types for them. Now with the new version of Family Tree Maker, I can make PDF types and send them to every one.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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PDF is very good for collating mateials – printouts, scans – from multiple sources in a single file, without a lot of futzing.

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Thanks All ……. for the ideas for using pdf’s.
It’s always interesting to learn new ways and reasons to apply software.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

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Hello everyone
I am using Adobe Acrobat at work too, and wanted to point out something regarding its security:

1) Acrobat lets you secure your document so
– A) it won’t be altered
– nobody can copy/paste info from that document (unless you allow them to)
– C) the document won’t be printed (unless you want it to)
– D) its fields won’t be tampered with

2) Additionally, you can sign documents for validation purposes. I am not much into this feature, but provided it works right, I think of many uses for it. It’s fairly well detailed in the help file.

Now, a warning:

When you protect a pdf file because it’s so important that some of the actions described in (1) are not taken, you should know that some software out there can leave your secured file vulnerable for edition, as if you had never protected it. It’s the case of Advanced PDF Password Recovery (I don’t know other, but there surely must be). Of course, this soft is not widely known among people (most don’t even know how a pdf file is generated – and I mean no offense). BUT if you need to be ABSOLUTELY sure that nobody can take the actions described in (1), you will be a bit dissapointed. APPR vulnerates security in less than you would say “do it”.

Still, Acrobat provides some security with digital signatures (2). Because Acrobat tells you if a document has been modified after it was last signed, vulnerating it with APPR would make it evident that the document has been tampered with (for further info on this pls post back).

And, one last thing: not only APPR can directly vulnerate security in a way that the document will show it has been altered. It also lets you perform several password-cracking attacks (such as brute force, dictionary, don’t remember if any other).

In this last case, after getting the password, you’d have to “save as” in order to decrypt it, thus triggering the alert that the document has been modified (as long as it was signed).

If you have some comments on this, pls post back. As I said above, I’m not much into virtual signatures, so maybe someone can add useful info.

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There are a number of “brute force” password crackers. If you choose a long password with punctuation in it (long meaning longer than 8 characters), these cracking programs can take an incredibly long time to succeed; days. So while no file is invulnerable from tampering, you can at least make it too difficult for the casual user.

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I also believe that’s the best one can do. Using long, alphanumeric passwords, with spaces and non-alphanumeric characters in between (such as * ) will make it really difficult to obtain the pass.

After my post yesterday I’ve been reviewing the Virtual Signatures feature in Acrobat and (as far as I see) my advice would be:

1) create a regular pdf using pdf writer (so it won’t be protected and you can edit it later without changing the default security settings you set, which you’d have to do if you had created it with distiller). If you need the advanced features of pdf distiller (bookmarks / hyperliks / whatever), with some practical sense I’d set distiller with no password or security settings (continue reading)

2) open your recently created pdf file and sign it

3) when you are prompted to “save the signed file as”, before saving, “Security” should display “None”. Change it to “Standard”, select the actions you want to restrict, enter your password, confirm, done.

So, this won’t prevent crackers from taking the restricted actions (since as I said in my last post, the program can vulnerate protected pdf files in no time, without having to crack the password). BUT for commercial purposes, I believe if someone intended to vulnerate the secured file, the “Document Altered” alarm would be triggered and the signatures would show they are no longer valid.

When the document is forwarded back to you, you check the signatures and realize the pdf file has been tampered with.

Please, any other input on this would be greatly appreciated.

Greets

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if there are other good uses for .pdf, please suggest a few

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[/indent] When size does matter, you may find that a Word doc, with imported graphics and weighing in at (say) 5MB, is reduced to a sub-100K pdf.

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You need the full Acrobat product to make changes.
However, it is best to make chages to the original, say, Word doc, if you have it, then recreate the PDF using Acrobat.

You can purchase the full Acrobat product for about $219 (US) at places such as http://www.provantage.com.

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One point I’d like to add to this discussion is that PDF files can actually be quite interactive. I’ve got a sample invoice on my website http://www.webgenii.ca[/url%5D that allows data to be filled into the form, calculates dollar values and has tips and buttons. Mind you I didn’t knock it off in 10 minutes . But with a little prior planning, it seems a lot of the PDF forms I see on the web could be a ton more useful.

Cheers

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