PDF1A Output Format Ignores Security Settings

Hi,

I have been doing some work with your com settings to print Word documents to PDF using PDFCreator. All has gone well until yesterday when I noticed that if I set the pdf save format to PDF1A (not tested but perhaps PDF1A and PDFX as well) vice simply PDF then any security settings I apply are simply ignored. E.g., if I set the option not to allow printing then I would expect that the pdf created couldn’t be printed. Unfortunately it can be printed!!

Thinking it could be an issue with my code, I printed directly from your interface with the same settings and there also the security features I set were ignored.

Is this a bug, or by design. I am not that familiar with pdf formats, however, if this is by design (that PDFA1 can’t have security features) then your software provides a false sense of security by showing the ability to set those features.

Please advise

.

Hi,

thanks for the feedback.
The basic thing first: PDF/A doesn’t allow encryption. Previous versions of PDFCreator did allow encrypting PDF/A, even though this basically created an invalid PDF/A. But I agree there should be a warning if you have security enabled in your profile and then select PDF/A as output format.
The security settings generally create a false sense of security by the way, unless you encrypt the PDF with a password for opening. All restrictions like disable printing/copying/editing only set flags which the viewing application can handle as it likes, but this fact is hardly communicated at all. We will discuss this issue in our team.

Best regards,

Robin

Thank you plus this additional text to meet min. post length.