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Desperately Need Help: How to stop Firefox from editing PDF files?

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  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė cor-el

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Greetings everyone,

I've been using Firefox as my PDF ebook reader on my Windows 10 PC because it Firefox wasn't able to make changes to PDF files. However, it seems that Firefox is now capable of editing PDF files and this has me incredibly worried... :'(

How can I make it so that Firefox isn't able to make changes to PDF ebook files I open?

Thank you for any help!

Greetings everyone, I've been using Firefox as my PDF ebook reader on my Windows 10 PC because it Firefox wasn't able to make changes to PDF files. However, it seems that Firefox is now capable of editing PDF files and this has me incredibly worried... :'( How can I make it so that Firefox isn't able to make changes to PDF ebook files I open? Thank you for any help!

All Replies (8)

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Dropa said

AFAIK you can't edit another PDF ebook or PDF file unless you have access to do so or have Acrobat Pro that can edit such files. If you created the PDF that requires you have Acrobat to create or the software the created the PDF to edit the pdf file. So where are those PDF files your talking about coming from or site ?

Dropa said

AFAIK you can't edit another PDF ebook or PDF file unless you have access to do so or have Acrobat Pro that can edit such files. If you created the PDF that requires you have Acrobat to create or the software the created the PDF to edit the pdf file. So where are those PDF files your talking about coming from or site ?

Thank you for your response Dropa!

The PDF files I want to read are coming from both websites and my local hard drive.

I just want to make sure that Firefox can't make changes to my .PDF files that I open in Firefox.

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Of course you can edit (annotate in fact) PDFs and you can remove that ability. Just enter about:config in the address bar and set pdfjs.annotationEditorMode = -1, then restart the browser.

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TyDraniu said

Of course you can edit (annotate in fact) PDFs and you can remove that ability. Just enter about:config in the address bar and set pdfjs.annotationEditorMode = -1, then restart the browser.

Thank you for your response TyDraniu.

Is there another way I can make .PDF files uneditable? Or is there another PDF Reader App you can recommend?

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But please. Don't be so desperate with titles the next time.

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TyDraniu said

But please. Don't be so desperate with titles the next time.

Sorry, but this is really important to me because I want to know that my .PDF files can't be edited. I'm reading much more .PDF files than in the past.

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Why don't you make these eBook file read-only as that is the best way to prevent making changes inadvertently ?

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cor-el said

Why don't you make these eBook file read-only as that is the best way to prevent making changes inadvertently ?

Thank you for your response!

How can I make PDF files "Read Only"???

I just wish I could keep using Firefox as my PDF Reader as it used to be: When Firefox was unable to make changes to PDF files... :'( :'( :'(

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With a PDF file on your local drive you should be able set set this file to Read-only in the properties of this file (right-click context menu). This is not possible, but you should be able to reload the page (not sure if there is an undo available as I've never used it).

Did you set pdfjs.annotationEditorMode = -1 on the about:config page like suggested above ?

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. On the warning page, you can click "Accept the Risk and Continue" to open about:config.