Losing Reader Extension Rights After Saving

[Former Community Member]

Hi,



I have a form I have had extensions enabled. When a user opens the doc with Reader 7 for a start it works fine, they can fill in the fields and save the form. However, when they come back later to make more changes to the form (after saving and closing it once) they receive this message:



"This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and these rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."



At first I thought this must just be the way its supposed to work, but then I downloaded a sample enabled PDF from Adobe. I was able to open the sample, make changes, save it, and reopen it and make more changes and save again. I created another test form with a couple of fields and enabled it and it worked fine too (so its not my copy of Extensions software).



Does anybody have any idea why this is happening to my form, or experienced the problem? It does use a fair bit of java script to automate filling, but I don't see how that could hurt it.



Thanks in advance,



David

[Former Community Member]

I recently ran into the same problem with a form created in LiveCyle Designer ES (8.1) in which Reader Extension Rights were lost from the form.



I took look at the XML created by LiveCycle Designer and discovered that for forms that use a large amount of JavaScript, LC Designer will inject JavaScript in places you don't expect. In my situation, the JavaScript was placed in a spot in the XML that I'm guessing made the XFA XML invalid. When someone using AcroBat Reader 8.1 reached this point in the PDF form and entered data the structure of the document changed which removed the Rights Enabled features of the form.



I've had instances in which LC Designer will repeat the same script element twice in a parent element. I've also had instances in which the same script element was applied to two identical parent elements. For example, I have a radio box in which when either Yes or No are selected, another form element is made visible or invisible. I discovered that the script code to make the form element visible was applied to another radio yes option. (while the No option was not affected).



I've learned the hard way that if you create forms in LC Designer that use a lot of JavaScript, you need to go through the XML code to make sure that the JavaScript is where you expect it to be and conversely check to make sure it is not randomly placed in the form XML.

[Former Community Member]

HI David and all:



I got the same message:



"This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and these rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."



My response to another discussion shows my solution:



Wow, I suffered like the rest of you, both with the Tab Order and with setting Acrobat Reader privileges for fillable forms. The cause, unfortunately, appears to be on the Mac side of life. I use Leopard.



When I went to the dark side (using Parallels and XP) and downloaded the 30-day trial version of Acrobat Professional, I succeeded in setting both the Tab Order and setting Reader privileges.



Don't get excited PC guys. There is still not enough material here to make a funny TV ad.



My goodness, though. The frustrating process of discovery was a tremendous waste of time and energy. How long has CS3 been out? Are there any excuses?



Tim

[Former Community Member]

Shoot! I spoke too soon. Mac or PC, the trouble continues. It is variable, as reported above:

___________________

"I am facing a similar situation like David.



We are using a editable PDF form downloaded from the IRS website. we are using various forms. All we do is fill out the forms for the users depending on the values they enter in our application.



Now, the warning message:

"This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and these rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."



only comes up with certain forms and not all...and that too on certai machines. I tried using the help>detect&repair option in Adobe Acrobat 7.0.0 and it worked on my machine and the message stops. But when my colleauge tried the same thing, the message still continues to appear!!



This message can be very intimidating . . .

______________________



The message appears on some machines and not others. I have no further time to waste on this buggy software issue. I will explore other solutions to meet my company's requirements for online forms.



Sorry Adobe, but your forms feature in Acrobat Professional is a big red sore in the otherwise handsome CS3 suite.



Tim

[Former Community Member]

ADOBE, please let me know if you have a fix for this, because I have the same problem.

Using only Reader to fill the forms.

I do not create the forms.

[Former Community Member]

I am running into the same message when trying to open up a Reader Extended pdf file that has been edited from Adobe Reader once and saved on file system.



The pdf files that has this problem were files that were generated by running a short term process that render a xdp file into pdf then Reader Extends that pdf file.



The pdf files that does not have this problem were files that were generated by running the same short tem process that render a pdf file into pdf then Reader Extends that pdf file.



I am not using Acrobat Professional, I am using the Adobe Reader 8.0.

[Former Community Member]

One more to join this problematic party.



I am trying to send a client a pdf with form fields to edit as she needs for printing. However, I get the dreaded "This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and theses rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document." The file opens fine and works fine using Mac OSX's Preview, but when I load the file in Acrobat 8 on my Windows machine I get the error.



Adobe???

[Former Community Member]

I had some success in getting my file to allow saving with form fields after saving a copy and then reselecting Enable Usage Rights Adobe Reader. I then saved the file under a completely different name. By the way I am creating my PDFs with form fields using Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional version 8.1.2.

[Former Community Member]

Also been hit by this problem and like other users I'm using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro in which it was claimed that this error was fixed as part of the latest bug fixes. One point to note is that on testing this I only was able to sign/edit the pdf using adobe reader on a couple of machines, whenever I try to do this on a VM the above error is seen every time. This is worrying as this is only a proof of concept and it doesn't reassure me that this will work well in the real world.

[Former Community Member]

Hi everyone.facing same problem. we created forms using designer 8 and trying to extensd them in reader extensions 8 and we get this problem. for some forms it works fine and other forms it suddenly raises error. cant understand what to . posted this problme to support but no reply from them yet. anyone know how we can fix that

thanks

[Former Community Member]

Hi All,



I was reading through "Reader Extensions ES" Help file, accoding to that you will have to create a final version of document using LiveCycle Reader Extensions and it will work. Read below



If you have an evaluation version of Reader Extensions ES, you can select the Draft draft level when you save an XFA form. Although a watermark does not appear on documents modified using an evaluation version of the product, the documents do have a limited validity period and will lose their usage rights at the end of the evaluation period. When an end user opens a PDF document that contains expired usage rights in Adobe Reader 7.0 or later (up to Adobe Reader 7.0.5), the following message is displayed:

"This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and these rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."

When you add usage rights to a PDF document by using an evaluation version of Reader Extensions ES, you should include text in the message that informs users when the usage rights in the PDF document will expire.

If you are ready to finalize and distribute the PDF document, select Final. Processing the file with Final selected increases the forms-processed counter; therefore, if you have a limited usage license, select this option only when you are sure that the document is final.



Cheers,



Jaspreet Singh

[Former Community Member]

I'm not sure this is the right forum topic to post this reply, but I got the same error message but I'm not using LiveCycle Reader Extension Rights.



I discovered an answer to this problem, at least in my case...



I created a form in LiveCycle Designer that I intended to only be used to fill out online and then print or email. (No database functionality). I had created a form like this before using LiveCycle 8 (CS3), where step one is to create the form in LD and then open it in Acrobat Pro and enable usage rights. But this time somehow something was different. The form worked fine for me, but when other users tried to use the form they received this error message:



"This document enabled extended features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and use of extended features is no longer available. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."



Long story short... I needed to remove all data bindings defined for individual fields in the form, and then it all works. My users are able to open, modify, save, reopen modify and save the form without problems using Acrobat Reader 8.



To remove all the data bindings on the form, open the form in LiveCycle Designer then click on the Window Menu | then check "Report" to make the report panel visible.



Then click on the Bindings Tab in the Report panel to display all the elements on the form that have data bindings. In my case the default seems to have been Normal Data Binding.



Click on each bound item and then go to the Object panel, select the Binding Tab, and change the default binding to None.



Do this for all bound fields and save the pdf file. reopen it in Acrobat Pro, Click the Advanced tab and select Enable Usage Rights, and save the file with a new name.



This may solve some of the reported problems on forms where no data binding is needed. Otherwise, you may need to explore purchasing software that unlocks additional forms capabilities from Adobe.



-David

[Former Community Member]

Although it has been a long time since the original query, I thought I would add my 2 cents on this issue. I had the same problem -- created a PDF with

Acrobat 9, enabled for commenting, sent out to coworkers, who then reported the dreaded "rights are no longer available" message. After many, many troubleshooting permutations, I finally found the problem to be related to the timestamp on the file, as noted above by Zofia_Remiszewska.

I am on the US east coast, and the document was sent to coworkers on the US west coast, 3 hours earlier. When they opened the document, it appeared to be "from the future" (lol) and therefore suspect. This was born out by the fact that the next day, the file behaved as expected for them. I also verified this on a test system, where I was able to switch the time setting. By the way, this happened with both Reader 8 and 9.

So, I guess the workaround is either to change your computer's time before sending a file with rights extensions to someone in an earlier time zone, or create it and hold it until they have caught up with the time in the file's timestamp.

That has to be about the weirdest bug I have encountered to date...

[Steven_Yen]

Hi,  I am Acrobat QE, and I try to reproduce the problem that you have reported. Since I don't have your test file so our developer askes me to do the following steps to reproduce the problem but we can't reproduce the problem. So can you please send me the test file at (syen@adobe.com). Thanks.

Steps to reproduce the problem:

Set your time zone to London, and your clock to 3AM (pick a day, say 4/18) Reader-Enable or sign a file Set your time zone to San Francisco, and your clock to 9PM on 4/17. That's 1 hour later. See if the file is enabled or the signature is valid.

Please send me emial if you have the steps to reproduce the problem too.

Thanks. Steven;

[Santosh_Nangunoori]

Hi Keith,

I was unable to reproduce the issue.

I’ve used AcroPro9.3.1 to ReaderExtend a PDF on machine that uses GMT+9:30 and immediately opened it on a different machine that uses GMT+5:30 using Adobe Reader 8.1.7 and it was just working fine.

Could you please specify the exact versions of Acrobat and Reader that you have used and upload the problematic test files (without ReaderExtended and with ReaderExtended) ?

Are you seeing this issue with any PDF file or with a specific PDF?

Thanks,

Santosh

[Former Community Member]

Hello Santosh,

Actually, I have provided this information to Steven Yen in response to his post just before yours. He informs me he was able to reproduce the problem with the PDF file I provided, and has forwarded the issue to development.

For the record, here are the repro steps I gave to Steven:

Repro:

1. Open FrameMaker book (FrameMaker 8.0 p277).
2. Click File > Save as PDF. Use custom job options, webm_PDF.joboptions, attached.
3. Distiller (v9.3.2163) creates and opens PDF file [FileName].pdf. Timestamp is (e.g) 4:27 pm ET, 4/19/2010.
4. In Acrobat Pro 9.3.2, click Comments > Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader.
5. In the Save As dialog, change the document name to [FileName]_comments.pdf and save to another directory.
6. Access that directory from another system with an earlier system time (in this case, 5 hours and 17 minutes earlier, also on Eastern Time) and transfer the file to the desktop of the other system using Windows Explorer.
7. On the other system, double-click the PDF file on the desktop to open it with Acrobat Reader. The current version in use on the remote system is 8.2.0, these results were also observed with Reader 9.x.x.
8. Upon opening the document, Reader displays the message:

"This document contained certain rights to enable special features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and these rights are no longer valid. Please contact the author for the original version of this document."

It is further observed that after the remote system time advances to a time later than the timestamp, the document opens as expected with commenting enabled. This behavior was experienced on two other computers, both located in California, on Pacific time.

The PDF was created on Windows XP SP3. This behavior occurred with any/all PDFs created in the above manner. If you would like me to provide sample files, please let me know the best way to get them to you.

Thanks,

Keith

[Steven_Yen]

Hi N Santosh Kumar

Look like this is a user error that his computer should match the "real time", and it is an error to open a file at a time earlier than when the document was signed. If the signing time was for UB, then the UB will be invalid if we believe the current time is earlier than the signing time. We do allow for small clock errors, but 5 hours is too much.

Steven;

[Former Community Member]

I'm also getting this error with a certain pdf that I was provided. However it only appears on some computers and not others. I haven't been able to determine why some and not others. It's not reader version because I've had it happen with reader version 7, then upgraded to 8.22 and it still happens. I've uninstalled and reinstalled a bunch of times. I also tried installing acrobat 8 standard and opened the file and entered info into the forms successfully with acrobat 8 standard. But when I open the file with reader 8 on the same computer, I get the error.

However on some other computers I can open the pdf with reader 8.13 through 8.22 and I don't get the error and I can enter text into the forms just fine.

I'm unable to edit the pdf with acrobat because it is locked by password security.

Any help? Any info you'd like me to provide? Thanks!

Somethings to note:

All of the computers here have their time synced to a server so they should all be the same timezone.

Some of them are running XP SP2 and and some SP3

[Steven_Yen]

Please check the computers that have the problem to make sure their times are current time. We used to have the problem that computer's time is 5 hours early than current time even they are in the same timezone.

Acrobat 8 Standard always can fill in data no matter the uB rights are broken or not. The UB broken messages only show up in Reader and won't show up in Acrobat products.

Please send me the test files so I can do more further investigation.

Thanks, Steven;

[Mikel57]

Problem here exactly as described by Keith Arnett. Not one Framemaker (9.04)-generated pdf file retains the extended reader rights when opened in Reader 9.x on another computer. No matter what the message says, I did not alter the files in any way. And yes, I have checked the time settings on both machines. Solutions to this problem would definitely be very welcome!

[Steven_Yen]

Hi Keith,

I have discussed with our developer that we have found your computer should match the “real time”, and it is an error to open a file at a  time earlier than when the document was signed. If the signing time was for UB,  then the UB will be invalid if we believe the current time is earlier than the  signing time. We do allow for small clock errors, but 5 hours is too  much.

Thanks. Steven;

[Brandon_Schuste]

I'm having this problem...and this is August 6, 2010.  This thread began in 2006!!!  I hate to be one of those grumpy people ranting in a forum, but this is a BIG deal.

My boss is frusterated that this is happening when my goal was to use pdf's to simplify the process for everyone.  I only saw a few comments from someone representing Adobe throughout this whole thread.  My problem is not related to timeclocks as it is all in the same building.  I'm using Acrobat Pro 9 up to date.

If this WAS a time clock issue, why not make the program tell you...THIS IS A TIME CLOCK ISSUE and we are locking you out of the document?  Ambiguous errors make people upset and they have to spend time Googling instead of working.

Someone from Adobe:  please fix this... I can't find an easy solution to this random problem :'-(