Create and place password protected PDFs

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

Unchecking the ‘Require password to open’ or 'Require password for modification and printing’ checkboxes removes the entered password completely rather than hiding and greying it out...

Steps to Reproduce

1. In the Affinity Designer Export Persona, create a slice
2. Select a PDF Preset from the Export Options window
3. Select the ‘Require password to open’ checkbox
4. Add or Paste an ‘Open password’ so the password remains hidden
5. Uncheck the ‘Require password to open’ checkbox
6. The password is removed from the ‘Open password’ text entry field instead of being greyed out as it is in the main Export Window for all three apps resulting in the password having to be re-entered each time the ‘Require password to open’ checkbox is selected
7. Repeat Steps 1 to 5 above but at Step 4 toggle the ‘Show Password’ icon so the password is revealed
8. Uncheck the ‘Require password to open’ checkbox
9. The password visibility is correctly toggled off and the password correctly remains greyed out in the ‘Open password’ text entry field

Note: The behaviour is the same when applying the steps above to the ‘Require password for modification and printing’ in the Affinity Designer Export Persona

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

Checking the 'Require password for modification and printing’ checkbox without adding a Password fails to display an error on export...

Steps to Reproduce

1. In the Affinity Designer Export Persona, create a slice
2. Select a PDF Preset from the Export Options Window
3. Add an Open Password (Optional)
4. Select the ‘Require password for modification and printing’ checkbox but leave the field blank
5. Export the slice
6. The ‘You have specified permissions but not provided a permissions password. Please provide a master password’ error message fails to display allowing the file to be exported. This differs from the main Export window where the file can’t be exported unless a Permissions password is entered when the 'Require password for modification and printing’ is selected

[Hangman]

Affinity Apps Main Export Window

The error message when toggling password visibility on and off for passwords containing legal characters which Affinity apps won't currently accept doesn't reflect the password text entry field with focus...

Steps to Reproduce

1. Add both an ‘Open’ and ‘Permissions’ password containing legal characters which Affinity apps won't currently accept
2. Toggle password visibility on and off for the respective passwords and the error message doesn’t reflect the password with focus, i.e., toggle the ‘Open’ password visibility off and the error message references the ‘Permissions’ password and vice versa

[Hangman]

Affinity Apps Main Export Window

Moving the text entry field focus away from a password field containing legal characters which Affinity apps won't currently accept removes all characters from the password field instead of allowing the password to be edited...

Steps to Reproduce

1. Add an ‘Open’ and/or ‘Permissions’ password containing legal characters which Affinity apps won't currently accept
2. Move focus away from the password text entry boxes to a different text entry box or selection dropdown, e.g., the Pages text entry box or Area selection dropdown
3. This completely removes all characters from the password text entry box instead of allowing the user to edit the password

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

Toggling the visibility of a password that Affinity Designer incorrectly believes uses illegal Unicode characters displays the "Your open password contains characters that are not supported by PDF" error message twice...

 

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

When adding an "Open" and/or "Permissions" PDF Password in Affinity Designer's Export Persona that includes characters Affinity Designer incorrectly believes uses illegal Unicode characters, when the respective Password field has focus, switching to a different app in the Dock triggers the error message "Your open/permissions password contains characters that are not supported by PDF" resulting in an Affinity Designer Dock icon bounce...

Note: This is only the case when the Export Options Panel is 'Undocked' and doesn't happen when the panel is 'Docked'.

 

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

Undocking the Export Options Panel in Affinity Designer's Export Persona will trigger the error message "Your open/permissions password contains characters that are not supported by PDF" when either PDF Password contains illegal characters despite neither text entry field having focus...

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

Edit in Publisher fails in Affinity Designer after exporting a password-protected PDF in Affinity Designer's Export Persona with a 'The file includes features from a later version of Affinity' error message.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create an Affinity Publisher File
2. Go to 'File > Edit in Designer'
3. Select Designer's Export Persona
4. Create a Slice from the Layers Menu
5. Select a PDF Preset from the Export Options Panel
6. Set either an Open and/or Permissions Password or any combination of the two, including selecting the option but not entering a password
7. Export the Slice
8. Select the Designer Persona
9. Select File > Edit in Publisher
10. The error message 'The file includes features from a later version of Affinity' is displayed

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

A very minor one but when the Export Options panel is at its default width in the Affinity Designer Export Persona, the PDF Password text entry fields are too narrow to show any entered passwords and the Permissions Password label text is reduced to a tiny point size instead of remaining the same size with the text truncated...

[EmT]

To make this more readable, I have tidied up this thread by hiding the auto-posts by @Serif Info Bot

Thank you all for your reports. 

[Hangman]

Hi @EmT,

That's great, thank you...

[ttl]

On 10/26/2023 at 1:37 AM, Bit Arts said:

Now I think the time is ripe for Designer and Photo (and a bit easier in Publisher) to allow the entry of elementary document metadata, so that exported PDFs contain absolutely critical and necessary information about the origin: title, author, URL, etc. Specifically, I'm thinking of the fields called Document Information in Publisher, if I'm correct in my assumption that it's the content from these fields that will be displayed in Adobe Reader when viewing document information there.

Yes, you are correct.

I have discovered, that Publisher has some limit of number of characters for these fields, which is too small. Especially the content of Title field is truncated to 60 characters and everything entered over this limit is converted by Publisher to ellipsis character.

I have tested the limit of these entries in Acrobat Pro and found that there is limit to 2000 characters - when I pasted to title entry over 2500 characters in InDesign and then exported to PDF, opened it in Acrobat Pro and then copied the contents of Title entry to pasteboard, I have got first 2000 characters.

So, it is necessary to Serif to increase this very low limit of length of these fields to at least 2000 characters.

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

When using long PDF passwords in the Export Persona of Affinity Designer adding the password to the Permissions text entry field results in the password overlapping the show/hide password eye and paste Icons which means it's not possible to toggle password visibility on or off unless the Export Options panel is made wide enough to accommodate the full width of the password or you move the focus from the Permissions password text field to another field first before returning to the Permissions password field at which point the show/hide password icon becomes active.

Note: This doesn't happen for the Open Password text entry field which correctly wraps the password text.

[Hangman]

Affinity Designer Export Persona

When exporting a file as a password-protected PDF in Affinity Designer's Export Persona, changing the PDF preset from a PDF version that supports PDF passwords to a version that doesn't will correctly clear the checkmarks for the respective PDF password options but fails to clear any existing passwords resulting in the file failing to export.

In the main Export window for all three apps, selecting a PDF preset that doesn't support passwords correctly clears the passwords and unchecks the respective PDF password option checkboxes allowing the file to be exported without needing to remove the passwords first manually...