Lost password in Acrobat 6?

Subject: Lost password in Acrobat 6?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 11:59:53 -0500


Richard Kwiatkowski wondered: <<I have to update old documentation that the previous writer wrote, converted to a PDF and then password protected the document. Thing is, she did not disclose the password (the .doc version is no where to be found).>>

On the reasonable assumption that the documentation belongs to the employer (i.e., that the writer was paid for their work), then the previous writer is legally obliged to "turn over the keys" to the documents--and possibly backup copies of the documents themselves if they have them. It's worth contacting them and asking nicely before you take more drastic measures.

<<... is there anyway I can get around the password protection in Acrobat 6.0 to convert the PDF to a Word document?>>

Google on "Acrobat" and "password recovery" and you'll find a batch of options... all probably quite illegal under the DMCA copyright provisions. That's not to say that anyone would prosecute you for trying to recover your own information, but in the interest of a complete response, you should be aware of this potential problem.

Have you contacted Adobe and asked them to do the recovery for you? Presumably they have ways to crack their own documents, and tech support might be willing to do this for you under the current circumstances.

Pardon the criticism, but your company clearly needs to develop a suitable backup strategy so that original documents are protected and available for future use. Acrobat is useless as an updatable format: it is only useful as output from the original source documents, so it's the source documents you must protect. You can always regenerate the PDF, but as you're discovering, once the originals are gone, you're SOL.

--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com


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References:
Lost Password in Acrobat 6: From: Richard Kwiatkowski

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