OS X Big Sur print, "Save As PDF" not an option!

dkazreal Said:

"OS X Big Sur print, "Save As PDF" not an option!"

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Prior to Big Sur, I could print a range of pages from a protected pdf. It appears that with Big Sur, this option went away. I know this because I tutor ESL and I used this functionality to print all pages except for the last (which contained answers) from protected pdfs, so that I could send a pdf with answers omitted to a student. Last week I could do this, and this week after updating to Big Sur, I cannot do this.

Can you clarify exactly what "protected" means in this context?

I opened a password protected pdf, and was able to do Print and Save to PDF, no problem.

Then I created a pdf with two passwords, one for opening and one for printing, and again had no trouble saving as pdf, once I entered the password, as requested... so unless I misunderstood what "protected" means, it looks like everything is working here.

All I can think of is a workaround to that:

1 - separate the Answer page from the Question pages.

2 - tack on -Q to the file name of the questions pdf file and -A to the file name of the Answers pdf file. Name Mangler can do that very easily.

Then you can send the Questions PDF directly without having to do a print to pdf.

Big Toad, Preview in Big Sur won't let me separate the answers page.

Luis, that is correct that Preview in Big Sur allows Print / Save to PDF for the entire protected pdf. However, it apparently does not allow a range of pages to be saved/printed. Put another way, if I have a 5-page protected pdf, I can't print pages 1-4 to a new pdf with only those 4 pages.

Appreciate the help here, Old Toad and Luis, but it seems like Preview in Big Sur lost some of the capabilities that Preview in Catalina allowed (right or wrong) to manipulate protected pdfs.

I have no problem in selecting a page range when printing to pdf. It works fine for protected or unprotected files.

How exactly does it not allow you to do it? Is the option dimmed? Is it there but not honored when you create the pdf?

Where is that pdf you are printing and which program are you using to print? Adobe? Chrome?

Also, and just to make sure I understood correctly, would the Save as PDF be available if you had selected the whole document? I think that is what you have been saying...

Can you double check that?

Please disregard my previous comments, they were meant for the OP.

I think that we are facing two different issues and that was not clear.

The OP’s issues were with selecting pages to print to pdf.

Yours I think has to do with the kind of protection embedded by the creator of the documents. These are NOT created with Preview and the security restrictions are similar to ones I used to see in some fiscal documents. They also forbade printing to pdf. That was years ago and thus nothing to do with Big Sur. I am sure that if you were to open that documents in High Sierra, say, Catalina or a windows machine you would not be able to print to pdf either.

Further, if you can view a pdf on your display, you should be able to print to pdf, period.

I disagree with that statement. If "print" is disabled, then you should NOT be able to print to pdf, period.

Otherwise, there would be no point in creating a pdf that could not be printed, because everyone could just print to pdf, then actually print to paper. What is the point of adding security restrictions if they are easily bypassed, anyway?

The point is: someone created a pdf that is not supposed to be printed (these realtor things).

pdf files that are created with preview in any way, with or without passwords for opening and/or printing, CAN be printed (to pdf or actual paper); furthermore, you CAN choose what pages to print.

AFAICT, everything is working as it should. Unless you or someone can provide an actual file that disproves what I said above, I stand by this.

Brent Darting wrote:

With Big Sur? So is it a problem with the hardware for the rest of us? I’m glad you were able to do what some of us can’t.

The pdf that I said I was able to print to pdf was one in a post by dkazreal that was since removed.

Yes, it was in Big Sur, and I could print to pdf without issue. I don't it was a protected pdf, as you said.

Are you saying that you can't print that to pdf, but can print it to paper? I have never seen a case where this happened.

Realtor #3 here. I have a Macbook Pro12,1 which is almost 6 years old. I cannot save a pdf directly. If I try to do this my screen "flutters" left to right in a swift motion! The only way I can save a pdf is using the print function and then save as pdf. Please let me know if anyone knows a fix for this.

Thanks - Dan

Thank you I am a REALTOR® too and I just lost it over trying to print to pdf an inspection page for the past 20 min! Exporting it as a PDF and resaving works!

Thank yoouuu!!!

I was SO SCARED because I was having this problem too after the update and I NEED this function for teaching! Thank you, aopalenik, for your reply. It worked!