PDF Security

[KevinDAmery]

I'm just trying the direct to PDF output for the first time, and I haven't been able to find anywhere to enable security settings for the output file, such as content copying, page extraction, commenting, etc. I also haven't found any mention of this in the help system.

Anyone know if 4.1 exposes these settings? If so, where do they hide?

(And if not, I sense a feature request coming on....)

[LTinker68]

No way to do it that I've seen. There's also no way to control the display of the file (page only, bookmarks and page, etc.) or to control the file properties information. I'm having to change those manually in the PDF output by modifying it in Acrobat after I build the file.

[KevinDAmery]

Luvvly... Ok, off to feature request land.

[Cecily]

No way to do it that I've seen. There's also no way to control the display of the file (page only, bookmarks and page, etc.) or to control the file properties information. I'm having to change those manually in the PDF output by modifying it in Acrobat after I build the file.

Would it be easier to output from Flare to a Word target and then generate the PDF from Word?

[KevinDAmery]

No way to do it that I've seen. There's also no way to control the display of the file (page only, bookmarks and page, etc.) or to control the file properties information. I'm having to change those manually in the PDF output by modifying it in Acrobat after I build the file.

Would it be easier to output from Flare to a Word target and then generate the PDF from Word?

That's what I was doing in 3.1, and I could continue to do so. The attraction to going directly to PDF, though, is that the direct to PDF option allows you to use Divs and other advanced features in your print output (Word doesn't know from Divs so if you use a Div for formatting it won't be used in the Word output).

For me, it isn't critical, since my primary deliverable is CHM. PDF is a nice-to-have for me. But of course, for others it is much more important.

[LTinker68]

If you're using page layouts then you can't go through Word to get to PDF, unless you only have one page layout and it's a single-page page layout. For instance, if you have multiple page layouts or if you have a page layout that has First, Left, Right, and Empty pages and you try to generate Word, you'll get an error stating that only one body block or something like that will be used and it'll delete all the others. And trust me, it totally blows out the design of the document.

I haven't found much in the PDF output that I haven't liked, and definitely nothing that's been a deal breaker for me. But I also have Acrobat so I can make the after-build modification to the file to change the File Properties for it. There's definitely a lot less after-build mod I have to do in PDF output than I do for Word.

[MarkN]

Just thought I'd mention that I've also submitted a feature request for PDF security.