Adobe Acrobat – Extract a Protected Page

Dear Apple Tech Talk:

I use Adobe Acrobat Professional (version 9) as my primary pdf application. I need to extract a page from a credit card statement that I downloaded from my bank. Although the pdf is not password protected to open and view, the bank has password protected it from any modifications including extracting a single page. I tried to do a print of a single page and save it as a pdf but Acrobat does not allow that. I could print one page and then scan it but that seems like a waste of time, paper and ink. Is there any way to get around the password protection?

Thanks for your question. Because files like credit card statements are considered legal documents, many banks and credit card companies protect them from modification. While Acrobat doesn’t provide a way to extract a page without the password (which your bank probably won’t share), there is a way around this.

We suggest saving a duplicate copy of the file to a convenient location like the desktop. Right (Control) click on the file and select Open With. Choose Preview (included in OS X) instead of Adobe Acrobat. Click on File and Export and save the new file to your desktop. Now, open this new exported file, again using Preview.

Although Preview does not allow you to extract a single page, you now have the ability to print a single page as a new pdf file. Click on File / Print. Select the Pages option and enter the page or pages you want, and instead of Print, click on the PDF option and Save as PDF. Select a location to save the new pdf.

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Hope that helps.