Unable to Open .pdf and not allowed to update the Reader

Question

I work for a State Agency that sends out .pdfs created with Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 to other State Agencies as an email attachment.
We put security on the .pdf allowing only printing of the document.
We have been doing this for years with no problems; however, we recently added a new branch of agencies to receive them.  Many of these agencies are unable to open the .pdf.
I suggested they update to the Reader X, but they say they are unable to update the Reader because, "Our IT department does not have the capability to upgrade my adobe without it affecting the daily operation of my case management system."  Apparently, they have lots of forms that they will be unable to use if they upgrade.
So, my question is:  Is there some other way the agencies can view and print the .pdf we are sending to them?
Thank you so much for your help!

Answer 1

Wendy7390 wrote:
When they try to open the .pdf, they get an error message that says the file is damaged.  I have not gotten a more detailed error message than that.
That could be enough.
Some email systems use encoding on files to make the transfer a little faster. When they are decoded at the receiving end, they can become corrupt.
One way to test if this is the issue would be to Zip the file first, email it, and see if they can unZip the file and open it. If that works, then encoding is the problem. Not sure what can be done about that other than to Zip all files or post the files to a server and send them a link.
I also seem to remember a conversation a long time ago about some newer files not being readable in Reader 5 and it tossed up that same error message but unfortunately, I'm depending on memory for that one and can't seem to find that old thread.
But try a testing a Zip file and see if that works first.