Do not have permission to open .pdf

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Level 2

178 points

Do not have permission to open .pdf

Occasionally, when I try and open a .pdf, I get a message saying that I don't have permission to open it. This is when I try and use Preview to open with.

When I Get Info, all permissions seem to be in order for me to view the document, so there is nothing I can do there to get it to open: I am the administrator paulchris.

This only happens when I try and view a document I received (usually via email), and not always then (I think). Documents I download via Safari, and documents I create (e.g. via the Print dialog) do not have this problem.

Furthermore, when I try and open them with Adobe Reader, they do open.

So what is happening, and what do I have to do to get to read these documents with the default reader Preview?

Thanks.

Paul.

Posted on Dec 11, 2016 10:47 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,323 points

Dec 11, 2016 7:04 PM in response to Paul Fryer

User File Ownership - Reset see post by Linc Davis

You may need to rebuild permissions on your user account. To do this,boot to your Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting) and open Terminal from the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type: ‘resetpassword’ (without the ’s), hit return, and select the admin user. You are not going to reset your password. Click on the icon for your Macs hard drive at the top. From the drop down below it select the user account which is having issues. At the bottom of the window, you'll see an area labeled Restore Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the reset button there. The process takes a few minutes. When complete, restart.

Repair User Permissions

User/File Permissions - How to Fix

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Answer 2

Dec 11, 2016 2:44 PM in response to Paul Fryer

Try renaming the original file <Newfilename.PDF> perhaps Preview is having a problem with multiple periods '.' in the filename.

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Answer 3

Paul Fryer Author

Level 2

178 points

Dec 11, 2016 7:11 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks, this seems to have fixed the issue. And btw, Spotlight now seems to be working better - I had more or less given up on it, since it usually failed to find stuff I know is there.

The repair process took only seconds, not several minutes - I wasn't sure it had done it, until it dawned on me that the grey "Done" box really meant it.

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

685,323 points

Dec 11, 2016 7:19 PM in response to Paul Fryer

Good. You are welcome.

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