Unable to open IRM protected PDF documents “This PDF file is protected”

Information Rights Management (IRM) protects your documents to prevent them from unauthorized actions like printing, forwarding to others. When you apply IRM policies on your document, it encrypts the document and adds the policies on the document which travels with the document to prevent the unauthorized actions.

SharePoint allows to apply IRM policies on document libraries. If you upload any document in these IRM enabled document libraries, the document will be encrypted. When you have to open the document, it requires an application which can authorize you as a legitimate user.

If you are opening a Microsoft Office file Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the MS Office Client Application authenticates you by connecting to Active Directory Right Management Service(AD RMS).  But if you are trying to open a pdf file and you are using Adobe acrobat reader, you will see this error.

Adobe Acrobat reader is not able to connect to AD RMS to authenticate the user, so it displays that it is not compatible.

Here is the link where you can find the compatible pdf readers that can connect to AD RMS to authenticate.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/sp-compatible-pdf-readers-for-irm?view=o365-worldwide

These readers will connect to AD RMS to authorize you and will decrypt the document. This will help you to protect the pdf documents as well with the IRM along with MS Office documents.

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