bad encrypt dictionary
December 17th, 2005
For a few days I’ve been trying to figure out why an Adobe Acrobat document I created on one computer wouldn’t open on another computer. When I tried to open it, I’d receive an error message that said simply “bad encrypt dictionary”. That’s it.
I created the document in Acrobat 7.0, and encrypted it with 7.0 encryption (the program offers options for different levels or versions of encryption). I tried searching with Google for the error message, but there were so many posts about DRM (digital rights management) that I couldn’t see the fix quickly or easily. (With so many students applying to the UCs and Stanford, it’s been a very busy week, so I couldn’t spend more than a few minutes searching.) It turned out to be a really simple thing–the 6.0 Reader I was using couldn’t read 7.0 encryption, so updating this version of Adobe Acrobat Reader solved the problem.
When will software companies realize that creating user-friendly error messages will certainly result in greater usage, sales, and satisfaction for their products? For example, why couldn’t this error message read something like this:
The version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (”the Reader”) that you are using cannot open your document because the Reader does not understand the encryption method used in your document. It is possible that your document uses a more current method of encryption than your Reader can understand, so you should try updating your Reader by opening the Reader, clicking Help, and then clicking Check for updates now… If that doesn’t work, you could try visiting the Adobe User-to-User Forums for free, non-guaranteed support.
Yeah, I know why–too much work and too difficult.
Gets better if you use acrobat 6.0 it can’t read the encryption. If they have 6.01 (the bug fix) they can. Problem is there are a lot of 6.0 installations out there
Thank you for your post. This helped immensely with the same problem you experienced.
thank you thank you!
i’ve got the same problem.thanks for ur post
thanks for the help!!
Thanks. I had an idea this was the problem BUT didn’t want to spend the time d/ling the new version on a slow internet connection. Now I guess it appears I must.
Thanks for the info/confirmation.
The answer to your question is quite simply that software programmers make software — not users. I think software will become more user-friendly in the next decade or so, as the emphasis shifts away from hardware performance to usability (as hardware advances slow).
Jordan