Locked File Issues? Me Too!

James Schmidt

Have you ever opened a file and tried to do some annotations and takeoff and it was locked with no permissions for the viewer? Are you unable to even print it to a .pdf or affect any change to it?

Boooooo! Me Too. Looking for a workaround?

I Found One! Aaaannnd, You're welcome. — If you have a other workaround, please share in the comments.—

It’s so simple I can’t believe I didn’t try it earlier. Stripping the file of its security, changing permissions or trying to get a password was seemingly pointless, so I figured….. how about I open it in different ways and see if any other systems have print options that bypass the locked nature of the document, and Chrome was the answer.

After I saved the documents in a file locally, I Right clicked on the document in “File Explorer” and selected “Open With” and chose Chrome. Which opens it with a crazy file path, relative to where it's saved…. Then I clicked Print” and printed it with the Destination of “Save as PDF” Note: Do not use Bluebeam PDF the problem will persist.

After opening the newly printed file again in REVU® it is unlocked and all security properties listed are allowed. BAM!

Essentially there are no Security measures whatsoever after following this workflow. KA-POW!

I’m sure this would be the case in all other forms of PDF document control weather its REVU® or any other .pdf viewer.

Please share this with everyone you can because as I understand it, this is a VERY common issue, and I have faced it myself many times before, only to end up printing it to 11X17 paper, scanning and rescaling it, running OCR Mod, re-doing all the bookmarks and hyperlinks - Bla Bla Bla…. It may not work in every case, but it does for this one.

I love solving problems with outside the box thinking and it really saved my butt this time because I need to get all that bridge steel taken off by the end of the week. Yikes!

Special thanks to Ashley Cox and Ryan Arbuckle who are the Trainers I met at the Studio Essentials Course today. without them helping me look at this in several different perspectives, and going through the steps that we did, I probably wouldn’t have dreamt up this workaround.

Cheers!

Aily Roper

Thank you for sharing, @James Schmidt!

@Ryan Arbuckle and @Ashley Cox are the best!

Ashley Cox

I'm so glad you were able to get into this file! Thanks for sharing this tip with us and everyone else who might need it! 😀

James Schmidt

No Problem, Sharing is Caring. 😂🤣 I hope more people get involved with Bluebeam Community and offer their suggestions as well. It will only make all of us more well equipped to deal with similar issues. A Rising Tide Lifts All Ships!

Have a great rest of your week.

Cheers!

Marco M

Amazing, James!

Feel free to also post a link to this tip in our Tips & Tricks pinned post to earn a badge!

James Schmidt

Thanks @Marco M , Done and Done. Thanks for the Badge Earning Tip. I only recently made the jump to Explorer and look forward to seeing what comes next whilst enjoying reviewing the concepts and things I'm learning and or have come to understand more deeply.

Have a wonderful day Sir.

James Schmidt

Update, this workflow works with Firefox also, but was not functional using Edge.

Please offer any other workflows that achieve this same outcome for everyone's knowledge.

Cheers!

Carina

You don't even know the timing of this and the issue I was running into recently!!

💯

bwhitlock

Yep, this is something I mention to my students!

Thierry 1

A simple way to achieve the same result is in Revu.

Go to File/create from a PDF and select the PDF you want to unlock.

Carina

@Thierry 1 I gave this method a shot, but still got an error

This is what you are selecting, right?

James Schmidt

@Carina Did you attempt the workflow at the top of this thread that I posted on 10.16.24?
It should be able to work, however I do not know much about what your trying to do and what you're starting with.

Hope it helps.

James Schmidt

@Carina, I haven't checked this thread for a while. Busy times.

Did you get this resolved? I'll help however I can.

D Struct

love this hack 😍