Q: Does encrypting your Mac prohibit file sharing or readability?
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Jun 3, 2015 7:37 AMby etresoft,HelpfulHello bonobomama,
Encrypting your Mac with FileVault will not affect file sharing or readability. If you want to share data using a thumb drive, you must format the thumb drive as FAT and you cannot use any encryption. Well, technically you could format it a HFS+ with encryption, but then you could only give it to another Mac user and you would have to provide the password.
In any event, don't decrypt your Mac because of this. I wouldn't bother decrypting the thumb drive either. Just copy the files off the thumb drive, reformat it a FAT, and copy the files back on.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:19 AMby etresoft,Hello again bonobomama,
Can you explain in more detail how you are not "able to have someone access the file (PDF)"? Please be as specific as possible.
I suggest not doing anything else until the decryption completes. Then turn it back on (Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac - Apple Support). Depending on your machine, this could take a few days.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:29 AMby bonobomama,Thank you etresoft. I created a document in Word and couldn't save it as a jpeg file, which I needed for a web post. Therefore, I saved it as a pdf. I have Adobe. However, it is Read Only. I put the file on a thumb drive and took it to a UPS store, who assured me they could create a jpeg file from the pdf. They couldn't open the file. The message stated there was some kind of error. I asked if it might be because it was created with an Adobe Read Only software, and they assured me they had never had a problem with Read Only files.I had never experienced this before and surmised that it might be from the encryption I did. I thought I would test the theory be retrying with a docx file (they said they could also create a jpeg by printing out the document and scanning it) to see if she had the same problem but ended up doing the decryption instead. Worry was the cause of that, I guess.
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Jun 3, 2015 11:03 AMby etresoft,Hello again bonobomama,
Sorry, but encryption has nothing to do with that.
However, I strongly suggest not trying to go from Word to PDF. There is no way that is going to look decent. I suggest a modern web site with a Content Management system like WordPress or even Facebook. JPEG is for small images only.
The actual cause of your problem was likely the Adobe software. Adobe probably puts encryption on the file to so that people who use the PDF are prevented from things like printing or copying the content. Normally, you can just save a Word document as PDF should you need a PDF version. But once you install Adobe's software, it will interfere with the build-in PDF software included in the operating system. It's a big mess. To top it all off, that PDF encryption is trivially easy to bypass.
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Jun 3, 2015 1:30 PMby bonobomama,Interesting you should say that, etresoft. Because I took the Word version into the UPS store on the thumb drive and their computer asked format it and then warned if they did it would erase all the data! That was strange. I need a small JPEG for the posting I'm going to do online. So I've emailed the Word docx to UPS and going to see if that helps. Their computer runs on Windows. I'm sure that has nothing to do with it but it was still very strange. Note: I've only started encountering this problem since I upgraded to Yosemite. Thanks for your pearls of wisdom. I will definitely be more wary in the future.
