To hide or not to hide?

[Secretgeek]

Good afternoon,

We use Acrobat Standard to manipulate scanned pages and as part of this process we use polygons and stamps to hide parts of text that we don't want the person viewing the files to see.

Obviously, we can't just give the viewer a copy of the pdf as they can just move the polygons and stamps out of the way so we create a new pdf using the Adobe PDF printer option.

We were under the impression that this 'flattens' the images. Certainly the stamps/polygons/etc can't be moved or adjusted in any way once this process has been done.

Or so we thought. A colleague of mine has discovered that by using the hand tool, holding left-click down and moving the mouse backwards and forwards in short motions (don't ask) it magically reveals the text that was hidden!

He's using Acrobat 8 standard and we've yet to replicate the issue on any other machine in the office.

This has VERY serious consequences for our work as we send clients documents that have very sensitive material removed from them. We can work around it but considering how much we paid for a dozen licences on something that doesn't do what we thought it did is pretty frustrating.

Has anyone encountered this effect? If so what did you do about it?

In short what the hell is going on?!

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[jmgalvin]

File menu/Document Properties/Security

On Permissions section set password for changes and make sure that Changes Allowed is marked None. Also make sure that Enable Copying, etc at bottom of window is unchecked.

Using OSX 10.3.9 & 10.4.11 on a G4, G5 & Intel Macbook

 

[Secretgeek]

Nope, sorry that hasn't worked.

Wiggle the mouse and it all reappears!

 

[jmgalvin]

Then turn off any encryption/permissions and save as eps. Then use file menu/Create PDF/From file and make a new pdf from the eps. don't know if Standard has that, as I use Acro pro.

Using OSX 10.3.9 & 10.4.11 on a G4, G5 & Intel Macbook

 

[Secretgeek]

Thanks JM that does the trick.

We had hoped to avoid this particular solution as it's what we used to do (except using TIFF instead of EPS) but seeing as 'Create PDF' doesn't do what we thought it looks like we'll have to go back to that.

Now if only I can get the 'massively bloated spool file' issue sorted and Acrobat might actually become good at what we need it for. :-\