April 1st, 2010
Occasionally one has to use an annoying PDF that one can’t re-save, but can only print. My sister had this situation dealing with some obnoxious state-run Microsoft system that didn’t allow the user to save a completed form, only to print it from a browser. The individual administering the system apparently flipped the wrong bit, as last year, the form could be saved.Here’s a workaround, various versions of which can allow you to save the PDF:
1. Turn off the print queue for the printer by going to Printer Setup Utility.
2. Print the file, but don’t reactivate the printer — choose the Add to Queue option.
3. Go into the terminal and su to root. If you haven’t enabled root, use sudo -s to start a root shell.
4. Type cd /var/spool/cups, then identify the file you just printed. Do this by matching the queued file’s time stamp to the time you printed the file ls -l; the file of interest should be at the bottom.
5. Copy don’t move that file out of the spool folder: cp filename ~/Desktop. I don’t know what a move mv will do to the print system.
6. Type cd ~/Desktop to move to your user’s Desktop folder.
7. Type chown myaccount:myaccount filename to make sure the Finder in your user space will play nicely with the file.
8. Peek inside the file and determine whether it’s a postscript or PDF file — you can drop it on TextEdit to see its contents. If it’s a postscript file, rename the file to filename.ps. If it’s a PDF file, rename it to filename.pdf.
9. Confirm the above by dropping the file on Preview. If the file is a postscript file, you can then save it as a PDF file from Preview.
via Save non-savable PDF files – Mac OS X Hints.
Tags: form, mac, osx, pdf, print
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