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Encrypted PDF gives 'invalid password'


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OK assembled technical people - I'm stuck with a problem I hope someone can suggest an answer to:

I have a couple of archived notes where the created / edited dates are 2011.  They contain password-protected PDF files with some old financial stuff in them.  I always leave a clue in the note to remind me of the pass phrase,  so when the password box popped up I was 99% certain I had the correct one.  Except it wasn't.

I still use the same version of Acrobat I used then,  and I have some 'unofficial' tools that can help with lost passwords.  But since Evernote doesn't open a password protected PDF until security is satisfied,  I can't prize information out of an Evernote note.  I need the native PDF format back.

I was working on my laptop,  so checked on the web - same result;  password not accepted.  I exported the note to ENEX and re-imported it - same result.

It's not critical I get to this information,  but it would be rather convenient to do so.  And I wonder how many other secure PDFs I've saved that might by now be locked forever...

Future PDFs are going on to Google Drive where they stay PDFs!

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19 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Future PDFs are going on to Google Drive where they stay PDFs!

PDFs are my standard format for static data

However my PDFs stay as PDF (Mac)  What format are your PDFs changing to

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6 hours ago, DTLow said:

What format are your PDFs changing to

Thanks @DTLow and @JohnLongney - it's always difficult to tech coherently through that red haze of mlld panic when you think something bad happened to your data.

I'd attached the PDF files to a note,  so "of course" I knew the content would be part of the Evernote database and not a stand-alone file.  I kinda forgot that a right-click and 'save attachments' option would give me my separate file back.  Phew.  One step further forward anyway.  Now maybe to try that password again,  and if necessary a bit of decrypting with extreme prejudice...

(Side note:  the password that I told myself to use still isn't working,  though Acrobat seems happy with the separate file format.  Ah well... brute force here we come.)

I (of course) have backups,  but I don't know when this password got corrupted so any backup might still be problematic.

Anyway.  Blood pressure normal,  heart rate - getting there.  Thanks again...  ;)

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<Sigh> Just to add the icing to this cake I spent the last hour setting up a password app;  then happened to look at LastPass and found the correct password immediately.  There had been no issue with Adobe or Evernote,  this was pure,  big time,  user failure.

Not to give too much away,  but I use abbreviations and keywords in a -hopefully- meaningless to anyone else string to indicate which password I used for a note.  "bra" at the beginning of my string forinstance means there are brackets around the rest of the words.  What I forgot today was that there are several different shapes of brackets...  My mind jumped to the standard () gentle curve,  when I should have been using a [ ] more angular approach.

My PDF in both the note and the extracted file opens up immediately.  Panic over.  Move along please - nothing to see here...

Maybe I am getting old...  <mumble mumble mumble...>

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Glad you got it sorted out. I put all passwords into Lastpass, even for files like this. I don't trust my memory, and my wife has access to my LP account should something happen to me. 

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3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Good idea.  No more hints - it just occurred to me I can save a note link in Lastpass as well as generating a proper random password for any files...

Glad you got it sorted out

I'm still interested in the "stay as pdf" comment.  I have pdfs embedded in enex files, and on the Evernote servers I'm guessing there's embedding in a database.
So far, my pdfs have always been maninted as pdfs
After solving that, we can discuss the transporter in Startrek ;)

The use of Lastpass for passwords is interesting and I'm following up on an integrated workflow

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I blame tachyons.  Mac users tend to be better served (I guess) in that attachments are left as discreet files,  while in Windows we get one humungous MySQL database with the attachments lumped in there somewhere.  Clearly there's a well-defined wrapper that allows Evernote Windows to split out the original content and recreate the separate file when there's a need to do so (and the dumb user remembers that's possible) but otherwise its just one block of code.

My option from Windows is to use a Gdrive folder and add a link to a PDF attachment in a note so that the file remains completely separate from the database and any keywords / summaries I might create.

Of course that does mean that the content isn't indexed,  but IME most PDFs contain more noise than useful keywords anyway - and I can take care of that with a title and/ or tags.

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2 hours ago, gazumped said:

Of course that does mean that the content isn't indexed

I still like the all documents in one house model, just in case a note doesn't get tagged or titled correctly, belts and suspenders (though encrypted PDFs don't index) .  Not to mention it's more work, bleehhhh.  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater due to a brain f@rt.  :(  

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3 hours ago, gazumped said:

I blame tachyons.  Mac users tend to be better served (I guess) in that attachments are left as discreet files,  while in Windows we get one humungous MySQL database with the attachments lumped in there somewhere.  Clearly there's a well-defined wrapper that allows Evernote Windows to split out the original content and recreate the separate file when there's a need to do so (and the dumb user remembers that's possible) but otherwise its just one block of code.

My option from Windows is to use a Gdrive folder and add a link to a PDF attachment in a note so that the file remains completely separate from the database and any keywords / summaries I might create.

Of course that does mean that the content isn't indexed,  but IME most PDFs contain more noise than useful keywords anyway - and I can take care of that with a title and/ or tags.

This seems like a whole lot of work, honestly. Also, you are now reliant on that file always being there with the same link address. What happens if for some reason you no longer use GDrive ?

Also, this is my personal preference, but I hate password protected PDFs. If I use more than one file (e.g. preparing for a tax return) and especially if I am using a mobile device, entering these passwords becomes a massive PITA.

What I am doing instead - not saying it's a better way to handle sensitive files, but to me it's just as safe and way more convenient - is I am keeping them in an encrypted file container. There's a whole number of well regarded products, both commercial and open source, that provide on-the-fly encryption with various degrees of cross platform compatibility (Veracrypt, VIIVO, NcryptedCloud, Cryptomator, Boxcryptor etc). This way, you can set up a single secure password, and you only have to enter it once per session. The container is mounted as a drive in Windows (so if you want to set up a shortcut to a PDF file inside the container, the shortcut should stay the same regardless of where you put your container as long as you always use the same drive letter to mount it). Every file you put into container, whether on your computer or mobile, is automatically encrypted. Some of these programs allow using key files in addition to passwords (although I think it's an overkill for most people ) and some can be optionally unlocked with TouchID - a great feature when scanning and saving lots of financial documents using my iPhone.

 

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3 hours ago, gazumped said:

My option from Windows is to use a Gdrive folder and add a link

 

41 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I am keeping them in an encrypted file container.

I agree with @csihilling; all documents in one house model i.e files as attachments to a note in Evernote
and like @gazumped, I use encrypted PDFs for sensitive data protection

I use Evernote for the features like backup, document retrieval, syncing ...   I see no reason to be looking at alternate solutions

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Thanks again to everyone for the extra perspective on all of this.  Must confess my first reaction at possibly losing the data was 1) Aargh!!  and 2) some existential horror that I'd locked several years of experience into Evernote and -shock,  more horror- it might not be safe there.  Especially since my good practice in keeping backups was no good at all since I didn't know when my files had changed - if they had.

I'm now reassured that everything is - and always has been - working as it should (except for one important wetware component that we won't mention at this point),  I can go back to not worrying about things.  I will stop leaving cute little notes for myself about passwords and use the actual password manager that I pay for to remember stuff.  I probably won't get into encryption of my local storage - I'm happy that the main laptop is plugged into its dock and anything on that drive is safe - subject to backups - from harm.  I'll continue to use passworded PDFs for the time being at least for the low-grade sensitive material I want to put into Evernote - mainly so no-one gets hit in the face with things I don't want them to see when I show off with Evernote.

I have gone back to CamScanner on the Android rather than continue with Evernote's camera feature for anything sensitive.  I can password protect a PDF file before I attach it to a note via CS.  There's minimal risk that I'd leave a PDF unprotected,  or that a note history could come back to haunt me,  but if I'm gonna do this,  I need to do it properly...

I am reminded however that when you're working mainly alone it's easy to see a small problem out of all proportion,  and it's very nice to be able to bounce some ideas around in a knowledgeable group as a sanity check.

You may have heard that we had a little local difficulty in Manchester yesterday - that kinda puts some tech problems into perspective too.  Sympathies to anyone who has friends or relatives in that area.  For some things there are no adequate words.  :mellow:

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