Ms word95 to pdf - "security level too high"?

Question

I'm a brand new user of Acrobat 9.0 (on XP system) - all kinds of problems (including major file crash and loss during 9.0  installation - more on that later). for now, I need to get started immediately on converting some MS Word doc files to pdfs - What I get from 9.0 is the message that "The Security Level is Too High".   If it's referring to the MS word docs, they are unprotected (I've checked and tried several - Word shows they are not protected, and as far as I know, never have been).  They were originally created on a mac with macWord - but were not protected and converted to windows with MacDrive7.  They show in MS Word in good condition and unprotected.  What do I need to do to get them into acrobat and into pdf format? I've also check the knowledge base here and elswhere without any clues except one chap who seemed to be having similar problems (along with serious crashes) using 8.1. Other than that, I'm mistified.
I've also tried using the context menu 'covert to pdf' method and also creating a new pdf (blank) and inserting them.  In both cases the security message aborted the process.  Need to do this right away. I'm not technically skilled, so if someone can give me some clear instructions I'd be grateful.  - red

Answer 1

Thank you all for responding so quickly. First, I'll mention the serious message and a warning. DO NOT INSTALL ACROBAT 9.0 IN AN ENVIRONMENT WITH WORD 7.0 (or any old(er) MS Word version before 2k).  The consequences are ghastly, including the deletion of half or more of your program files (including your email clients, av software and other primary programs), the corruption of your browser, registry (including restore points) and other not so nice events - worse than most bad viruses.  That's a problem Adobe and I will probably be taking a look at next week. Mean time, they indicate that they are going to add the matter to their KB and elswhere so that users have a heads-up on the issue.
As for the conversion problem from Word 7.0 .doc to .pdf - Bill, you just about nailed it. It was, indeed, a problem that could be circumvented by going to the printer dialog and setting the printer to  'Adobe pdf file' (something a novice wouldn't think of, nor line tech-support for that matter.).  As far as Word/pdf 'printer' is concerned you're just printing the file. However, as I understand things, that's how Adobe attaches the Word documents - It does it through the printer interface. Once that setting is changed to 'Adobe pdf printer' the file is simply picked from the print queue (or before) and loaded into A9. Save it from A9, and the job is done.  So, Bill, If Adobe hadn't found the answer, I do believe you would have been telling me exactly how to do it after a few more posts. The credit, though, goes to Neo Johnson, tech-support supervisor in New Delhi.  The last two days (almost 9 hours of phone time) were spent with various tech-support agents at Adobe; but,  he was the one who finely thought about the interaction between A9 and Word and figured it out.
Ok -that's the brief.  The rest is a little history/background for whomever is interested (skip, otherwise - not important).  The problem begins with failure to install - first, setup can't find the msi file - it was there, and I browsed it, so that was solved. Then 'invalid licensing - process stopped' messages appear. That was a little tougher and http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405970.html  and some other articles had me doing repair, reinstall, and other complex (for me) procedures. One of the problems was that flexnet had failed to install, which was a stumper for me (I couldn't find it to download separately - barely knew what it was/did - and finally understood that Adobe was supposed to install it. After that,  I did several uninstalls, to no effect. Finally I did a few moderate and then deep uninstalls (with Revo) and several reinstalls. Things got progressively worse.  On one reboot, my desktop came up and all the program icons were broken links.  I examined targets and such and then went to my 'program files' directory. To my horror, nearly all my primary program (including thunderbird email client, AVG etc.)  files had disappeared. The folders were simply empty.  Firefox still loaded, but the tabs were non functional.  Several checks and some light disc analysis indicated the files vanished. No trace. However, my document folders and data were intact (also backed-up). I went to restore and found that all the old restore points (including the one's Revo sets before uninstalling) were gone.  If it had been a virus, it couldn't have done a better job at making a mess of things.  At that point, I knew the registry had been toasted and I was facing a complete OS reinstall.  Instead, I opted for reinstalling some of the critical programs (and because the document files appeared to be intact).  After the first few - thunderbird, firefox etc.  - I was relieve to find that they were picking up on the old settings and restoring themselves to their previous states. I still have a number of these to do - and a few must be re-configured. But that's going ok. 
Then the saga of Adobe, several phone calls; several times the phone connection was cut off and I had to call again and start over from the beginning with a new person. The matter always had to be esculated to the next tier - more time, more cues, no solutions.  They went over the firefox settings, the adobe settings. They were puzzled about the broken links.  Attempts to open doc files (after a fresh install of winword) were resulting in 'invalid win32 application'. All kinds of problems made progress difficult.  We cleared up the 'invalid....' messages by reparing the file associations (in XP folder options) and then opening the docs in Word and resaving them as something else.  It was a labor.  Finally, there was simply no answer except, like the post here, Word 7 is simply too old and uses different scripting. The only solution was to either buy (ugh, ouch!) Word 2007 (and hope that it would load them and save them in A9 useable form) or, try installing Word2k (which I have) and processing them through that; and, then using Acrobat 8.x to load those and save the pdfs for A9 to use.  However, when Adobe said they could not provide me with a free (even trial) version of 8.x to do the job - licensing problems etc. -- It seemed like a really ugly solution.  Finally, I'm begging Adobe to give me a free copy of 8.x and in steps Neo.  He can't provide the free copy, but he asks a few questions himself.  We go to Adobe and reset some of the security settings (something other agents didn't know or think of). No dice - still can't load the docs.  But then he says, Open up Word. Ok.  load the file and then hit 'print' - ok, the print dialog comes up. 'Now,' he says, 'open the properties and see what printers are listed.'  Ok I do that, and I'll be... 'Adobe pdf printer' is among them.  "Just what I thought," he said, Adobe was hooking up with word, but didn't have its printer to attach." So we set 'Adobe pdf' as the printer and lo and behold, the docs loaded into Adobe as pdfs.  End of that story. (so bill, you had it too - wish you had answered the phone in the first place!)
Clean up.  So, there's a few simple solutions, I think (though i'm no techie and you folks will certainly have better ideas). First, I don't buy the story that early versions of Word are either 1) unsupported by MS or, 2) nobody uses them, as valid reasons why not to fix the problem of the "unloadable" docs.  I figure there are at least a couple of aproaches and easy patches that will correct the matter. One is from the Word  side - to is to set the current printer setting to use 'Adobe printer', get the file and then reset the printer back to what it was - default.   The other is to patch A9 to detect legacy source applications and bypass things that would normally make the file unloadable, unless, of course, they were actually protected or, read only files. In that case, Adobe could simply inform the user to 'unprotect' them, the same as it now does with its   'Security Setting too High' message for later versions.  I'm sure there are even better ways. But, that would fix things as far as file loading and conversion.
As to the installation and crash problems - those need to be addressed. Even if its only a few dozen people that might have the same problem, it needs 1) to be given as a noticable warning and keyword in Adobe documents (which now simply indicate that it can process .doc files);  2) it needs to be examined to  insure systems that have Word 7.x or older can install without problem, and certainly without harming their system.  Adobe has a good reputation and does a good job. That's worth protecting with all customers, even if Marketing can't quite see why and the bean counters can't find much profit in the task.  It's what I expect from professionals and to do less certainly subtracts from Adobe's standing. That should be worth a great deal, I would imagine.
Anyway, thanks folks - got to get some sleept, and then get those pdfs done and sent to people who are waiting for them. - best to you all, red.