Problem

You want people to be able to view the information in your PDFs but you don't want them to be able to save the PDF to their hard drive.

Solution:

None.

Sorry.

Before they can view the PDF, it must be on their computer's hard drive. That's how the web works.

You can apply security settings to the PDF so they can't open, print or change it without a password, but don't count on the security being utterly reliable. It can be broken.

You can apply further protection using commercial programs made for the purpose. These usually "lock" the PDF to a particular computer. But then your audience will have to download and install special plug-ins in order to read your files.

But you can't prevent the PDF from appearing on the user's hard drive.

Not if you want them to see the contents of the PDF.

Last updated 1/24/2003 12:11:05 AM

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