Markup requires password to edit PDF form saved from preview on Mac

[afd]

I downloaded a form from a financial website to fill in on my Mac and saved it via Preview to iCloud. I thought I’d fill it in on my ipad as the form needs a signature. I could open the form on my ipad but the moment I started filling it in, it asked for a password to save it. This didn’t happen on the Mac and the company said the PDFs aren’t password protected. I could edit the form with readle’s Documents app without a password but seemed to save the form as single pages.
Anyone know what’s happening?

 

[now i see it]

Maybe iPad OS natively assumes (because of a bug) you should have a password lock on a pdf you put a signature on.

 

[afd]

That, or Mac OS adds a password?

 

[afd]

I tried downloading form on ipad and editing it, it asked for an owner password. Could be the PDF is password protected, maybe it’s a Mac bug that it’s not asking for a password.

 

[NoBoMac]

Or a bug in iOS.

On the Mac, bring up the form in Preview and do File > Edit Permissions. See what checkboxes are turned on.

Guess, since everything is sandboxed in iOS, it's a weird combo/bug of share from cloud/Files app with iOS "Preview", which is making a new/copy of the document and the protection set get things gummed up.

Can install Adobe Reader and import into that, and see what happens there. If anyone should handle PDF correctly, should be Adobe.

 

[afd]

Thanks, I’ll have a look at permissions on preview.

 

[afd]

I think you’re right about an iOS bug/lack of feature, looks like there is a password needed but not for filling in form. iOS looking for one anyway

 

[Slartibart]

looks like the user/pass was filled in automatically on your Mac - check keychain what user and password was used.

 

[afd]

nothing in keychain for preview or name of document.

 

[afd]

Downloaded Acrobat Reader for Mac and ipad and got same result on both devices. Could fill in form on Mac, ipad app said document couldn’t be edited.
The Mac app said the document security would allow annotations and filling in form but not changing document. Looks like the ipad OS can’t see the granular security protections, only that it’s security protected and won’t allow any changes. Pity as ipad with Pencil ideal device to fill in a form.

 

[Slartibart]

well, on the Mac you should be able to “print” it into a new PDF - at least according to the info you posted.

EDIT: similar you can try “Make PDF” from the Share-menu in iPadOS.

 

[afd]

well, on the Mac you should be able to “print” it into a new PDF - at least according to the info you posted.

EDIT: similar you can try “Make PDF” from the Share-menu in iPadOS.

That was one of first things I tried. Must copy permissions.

 

[NoBoMac]

It's something with that specific document it seems, as I tried a couple of PDF forms, with passwords on them, from several sites, and they all were working correctly on MacOS and iOS.

Wild guess here, the form might not be meant to be used outside of the website it came from? I ran into something similar a number of years ago. The company I was dealing with, they had a PDF form, but could not download and fill out, needed to complete while on the website, while on Windows 7 PC, using Explorer. Anything else would not work.

This document might be coming from something similar to the document signing systems for contracts and such, meant to be filled out on their system and handled on the back-end servers.