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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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