Access Denied - unable to display current owner.

I save a lot of files as PDFs. Recently, I saved a financial document to PDF and it seems to be secured somehow. It's a pdf. Adobe complains opening it, complaining "There was an error opening this document. Access denied." Instead of opening it with a right-click, I tried starting Adobe and selecting the file. The message was similar but different - "You don't have permission to open this file. Contact the file owner or an administrator to obtain permission."

I noticed from the file properties that instead of a user owning the file, there is a zero value for the owner ID.

I try to change the owner using the following steps:

1. Right click the file and select Properties
2. Select Security tab
   
   • Get prompted "To continue, you must be an administrative user with permission to view this object's security properties. Do you want to continue?"
3. I select Continue - to elevate to admin privileges
   
   • I get the Owner tab message:
     "You do not have permission to view this object's security properties. To view its security properties, you can try taking ownership of the object. ....
     To try taking ownership of the object, select an account from the last, and then click OK."
   • Also note that under Current owner: it reports
     Unable to display current owner.
4. I select my account and press OK (or Apply - either one)
   
   • This results in a pop-up dialog from Windows Security that says "Unable to set new owner on scan0070.pdf. Access is denied."
   • OK is the only option, and I am left with the problem.

I have tried a few things from my utility belt, but have not been able to set the owner. Suggestions?

Did you try opening Adobe Reader as administrator and then opening the file?

pbcopter said:

Did you try opening Adobe Reader as administrator and then opening the file?

Yes of course. Adobe does not like the file, probably due to windows security seeing a lack of owner.

carwiz said:

" If the document is password protected on Open, you need the password or have the owner issue a new file .

There is no password. Furthermore, I am the owner of this file in every sense except that of the file system. I originally created this file by saving it to PDF from a website that generated the document for me.

Let me reiterate, the issue here, the issue I am trying to solve, is that the filesystem thinks the owner is NULL. There is no user ID as the owner. The user ID is set to ZERO (0x00000000) for this file.

I infer from this that since there is no such thing as a user 0, Windows reports the "You do not have permission to view this object's security properties." message which I described in my original post.

I assume this is also why Windows reports "Unable to display current owner" which I stated in my original post.

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