Cannot change original document in Preview

Am having this same problem. Very frustrating.

If I have two pdf documents open in Preview, select some pages in one document, & drag them into the other pdf document, pre-Sierra behavior was for the selected pages to be added to the target document without any kind of copy being made (& why is one needed, I have to ask?) . Sierra behavior is to add the dragged pages to the target document, but to announce by a bubble up above that "could not edit the original document, so a copy has been made" which simply multiplies old & new copies of one & the same. Requiring more steps in the work flow to locate the original to delete it; & also any copies made sequentially in a normal pdf concatenating process, to locate & delete all the intermediate steps. Am not seeing the "Sierra difference" here in a very positive light.

Am not understanding the sudden total reverence for "originals" preserving them (for posterity? for a mind-blowingly encyclopedic time-machine "versions" backup of epic proportions? for what, please?) with every intermediate step.

Closing the app after what should be a simple added-a-couple-pages-to-an-existing-document brings on a series of decisions about the fate of each and every one of the intermediate-step copies of the same blasted thing I opened because I wanted to change it. If I wanted the original, I wouldn't have added pages to it. I wanted the original plus the pages I added. I am a simple man, trying to do simple things. (insert imoji here)

Also, the deletion behavior of the "source" pages (source of what was dragged into the target document) seems to have changed.

Also, the selection behavior of pages in documents open in Preview has changed (specifically, select two pages in a pdf document, rotate them, & then drag them into another document, (pre-Sierra) the two selected pages remain selected after rotation & can be both dragged; (Sierra) rotate two pages, one page remains selected after being rotated, user has to go back & reselect the 2nd page to drag or do whatever else. And who knows what all else has changed.

Tempted to revert to my clone backup immediately, before discovering other changes in behavior in a basic OS app which I use frequently. I mean really.

Preview continues to be a viewer and annotation tool, but it is not a PDF editor. You can add multiple annotations, and save the PDF on itself, and quit Preview. When you open the document again, you can edit your annotations.

I can open a PDF form, enter some content into the form fields with Preview, and then save it onto itself again. On reopening it in Preview, I can edit the content previously entered in the form fields. Still no offer to duplicate the PDF.

Can't duplicate your issue with Preview 9.0 and macOS Sierra 10.12.0 (16A323).

Not using Evernote.

I am having the same exact problem. My workflow pre-Sierra was to open a PDF from Evernote in Preview, do some highlighting, and then save... but now I can't do that as when I try to save my highlights in Preview I get "The original document can't be changed, so a duplicate with your changes has been created."

As everyone has mentioned, it seems to be a Permissions issue. However, you're saying if you have the permissions.

I'd recommend Repairing Disk Permissions through Terminal (if you're comfortable):

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs --volume /

Else, I think you'll have to wait for an answer from Evernote.

FWIW, The only time I see this happen is if the PDF is listed as Password Encrypted in Get Info. I only have 4 such files out of 150. Might be something Evernote is doing while saving. I couldn't say because I don't have Evernote installed.

lopock wrote:

Am having this same problem. Very frustrating.

If I have two pdf documents open in Preview, select some pages in one document, & drag them into the other pdf document, pre-Sierra behavior was for the selected pages to be added to the target document without any kind of copy being made (& why is one needed, I have to ask?) . Sierra behavior is to add the dragged pages to the target document, but to announce by a bubble up above that "could not edit the original document, so a copy has been made" which simply multiplies old & new copies of one & the same.

No, Sierra behavior is the same as previous systems.

This happens because Preview is not able to make changes to the pdf - some permissions issue, as discussed.

Like dialabrain, I don't have evernote to test, but it looks like something with that application and the way it manages the pdf files. Just try doing this with other pdf files and you might find that it works.

THank you for responding, but my use is not connected w evernote at all, just standard preview.app work w files from my h d. Have already reverted to yosemite.

MY use of preview.app is quite repetitive, & already on level of muscle memory so that when i rotate a 2pg file & only p 1 remains selected, I know it immediately. moreso when i'm grtting a "we kept your original & created a courtesy copy to serve you our user still better" notice bubble & i have to decide what to keep, & not; this is totalky different behavior in a process i have done hundreds of times

same thing when @ lion (maybe) upgrade apple wanted to integrate ios annotatoon behavior in preview.app, & actual functionality was lost in the process. that's when i understood that upgrades could not be so for me.

also it seemed like my battery life was being affected adversely after the upgrade.

so that was enough for me, for lopock, a simple man of repetitive use of this very important to me app

i NEVER post on firums like this, by the way. lopock must be driven to this. "composed on my iphone"

I had a very similar issue with El Capitan, and am experiencing it again with Sierra. The difference with me is that it doesn't seem to be isolated to Evernote files. I do have trouble saving files from Skitch (owned by Evernote) that I am working on in Preview though, but I also have trouble with screenshots (.png files) that I open in Preview. During annotation I get a bubble message saying that the file could not be autosaved. If I try to save the file it won't save either.

With me the files are (usually) located on the Desktop which I do have write permissions to. I can also open the same files in PDFpenPro and save them out as PDFs. The issue for me doesn't seem to be very consistent either. While editing this comment I went back and was able to open two PNG screenshots (which I got the error message on before) and was able to add an annotation to each and save out from Preview.

Like I said, the problem for me was there when El Capitan came out also. I did all of the "voodoo-chicken-dance" things like repair permissions and other maintenance things using Onyx. I think I deleted Preview's preferences file as well. Can't remember what fixed it which of course is driving me a little crazy now that I'm seeing the issue again.

Just wanted to throw in my experience. Hope a fix is found soon.

This is definitely not a permission issue as it also happens when I try to edit an unencrypted normal pdf file without any protection and correct read and write protection stored on my desktop!!!

Sometimes I really ask me what Apple smokes! They cannot simply change such a core functionality as it breaks a lot of workflows and tools - not only Evernote is affected - also the Document Management solution "DEVONthink" is broken as I cannot delete empty pages or copy/paste pages in pdf files from within the application anymore which were scanned and converted to searchable PDF files via OCR and automatically imported into DEVONthink via the scanner software (ScanSnap Manager) before as DEVONthink is using the Mac OS Preview app to implement this features.

Besides I saw that even Box and a tool called Zotero is affected when I google for "mac os sierra the original document can't be changed".

One poster in this thread

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/61014/macos-sierra-papers-protected

speculates that this might be a change in response to a Dropbox hack but I hate Apples behaviour to make changes due to security risks regardless that it brakes a huge amount of great apps and affects a lot of Mac users in their day to day work. Either they don't care that it causes annoyance for their users or they even don't think about it. I don't know what is worse.

This is not the first time - El Capitan was exactly the same when they introduced System Integrity Protection. It is simply the ignorance of an elephant and the last sign before the big fall. If user find better alternatives they will switch the OS.

These kind of negative surprises cause a lot of frustration.

Having exactly the same issue. Don't even have Evernote.

Just this idiotic thing with Preview under Sierra that it keeps on wanting to save duplicate copies once I make changes (f.e. try adding a page) to the initial pdf. Didn't happen under El Capitan. Very annoying. People on this forum indicating it maybe a Permissions thing. Don't know. To the folders that the pdfs are in I have full read & write access.

Any ideas??

It's not just Sierra, and not all PDFs in Preview, and it's not a file permission issue. I'm still running the latest update of El Capitan. I created a bookmark in a PDF of a recent issue purchased and downloaded from Scientific American and got the same message about creating a copy. The file did not originally have write permission but I changed that, "Get Info" shows write permission but I still get the same message. This does not happen with other downloaded PDFs or with the oldest issues of Scientific American. My best guess is that it's a flag in the PDF.

I used ghostscript (in Terminal) to generate a new pdf with the same content:

gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o new/201701.pdf 201701.pdf

The output file is about half the size of the original, seems to have the same content, and allows bookmarking without creating yet another copy.

I am now automating the process:

for f in *.pdf

do gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o new/$f $f

done

It will take hours but it's worth the wait.

I struggled with the very same problem for months now. I waited for an macOS or an Evernote Update desperately. Nothing happened and I wondered, if I am the only user with that problem. So I tried to find a solution on my own. I was led to sites where it was about a problem with the ScanSnap driver. Others said it is a security problem as the existing replies in this forum.

But, it seems just that in Sierra it is not possible to edit a PDF file that is located in the Library folder. It has no relations to Evernote or ScanSnap or whatever. Regardless of which PDF file I use, whenever it is copied (with finder, not with Evernote) into my Library folder, it cannot be manipulated. On that page they discuss this problem: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/61014/macos-sierra-papers-protected

I did not find a way to tell Evernote to use another path for its datastore, as it is suggested in that forum above. You can, however, move it and create a symlink to the new location.

SOLUTION:

- close Evernote

- open finder and navigate to /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote/accounts/www.evernote.com

- there you will find a folder that is named as a random number

- move that folder to any other place on your disk using finder (I used the Documents-Folder and a subdirectory called EvernoteArchive

- now open terminal

- navigate to the /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote/accounts/www.evernote.com folder

- create a symbolic link with the command:

ln -s /Users/<username>/Documents/EvernoteArchive/1234567 1234567

(replace the path according to your new location and the number with the actual number that your folder is named after)

- In finder you should see the original folder with a link icon in it

- you can now open Evernote again and it should work as you are used to

I have a similar problem that occurs when I use Zotero. Specifically, when I withdraw a pdf file from the Zotero database, then attempt to Markup in Preview.

I note there is a similarity to in my implementation of Zotero on my Mac to that described by a discussant below. Namely, that the Zotero and Evernote libraries are stored in a place named, in my case: Users/Showroom ([Me]/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/o4hrtze1.default/zotero

Here is the Error Report I filed on the Zotero discussion Forum today:

System:

Mac OS Sierra 10.12.2

Zotero 4.0.29.15

1. I create a pdf in Preview.

2. I use File Info to confirm: Permissions (Me) has Read and Write, Fetching has Read, Everyone has Read.

3. I drag to Zotero Library.

4. I click on the Zotero pdf to open (or use Zotero View PDF, or Show File, then click to open in Preview... same result as follows occurs)

5. I attempt to use Preview to Markup the document.

6. Preview says: "The original document can't be changed, so a duplicate with your changes has been created")

7. Show Info confirms the Zotero pdf file has Permissions= (Me) has Read and Write, Fetching has Read, Everyone has Read.

8. Curiously, the pulldown file menu in the middle of Preview shows the WRONG path to the file.

I think it should show: Zotero Data Directory Location:

Users/Showroom ([Me]/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/o4hrtze1.default/zotero

... But instead, the path is to a directory to which I recently saved another pdf.

... So I am wondering if Sierra and/or Preview app has changed malevolently in some way, rather than Zotero?

I've only the problem in association with pdf files I want to annotate that are in my Zotero library. I haven't tested this exhaustively. However, if I randomly select both old and newly created pdf files from my Zotero library, the same result appears.

I'm pretty sure the problem has only become obviously apparent strongly in the last week or two. However, since I installed Sierra in September 2016, I've not been using my Zotero since this week, as I have been on an extended travel away from my base computer.

I am about to begin investigating whether this feature is more widely known in the Apple discussions. I did note that Apple is introducing a new file system in Sierra....

Mendelson, E. (2016, June 23). What MacOS Sierra’s New APFS File System Means to You. Retrieved 5 January 2017, from http://www.pcmag.com/article/345519/what-macos-sierras-new-apfs-file-system-mean s-to-you

I'll also repair permissions on my Mac disk, though I'm pretty sure I did that a week or two ago.

The fault I just reported (MyndSurfers, January 5, 2017) is a 'known feature' for Zotero users. The fault is discussed here:

In summary, the fault appears to be that Sierra forbids editing using Preview of pdf files stored in /Library/Application Support/blah blah.

Zotero 5.0 intends to fix the problem by moving the Zotero library elsewhere. A Beta Zotero 5.0 is available. Follow the link above.