This can happen when you try to open or save files from another user account on the same machine, or an external hard disk, or any other location with restricted access rights. This error message indicates that Live doesn't have the required permissions to access the file. Exit System Preferences.The file cannot be opened or changed (Mac) If you do not see the app in the list, click the plus (+) sign and then add Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Applications folder. Find Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader from the list of apps and select the box next to it to enable Full Disk Access.Click the Lock icon and enter your (user) password to unlock it. If this section is locked, you must unlock it before you can make changes.In the left sidebar, select Full Disk Access.You may need to give Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader, whichever one you are using, Full Disk Access. Your Mac, if you are running macOS Mojave or later, has a privacy feature called Full Disk Access.

However, in this particular issue, it appears that this is an access/permission problem, as users have reported this issue only occurs in Mail. In general, there could be several reasons why a PDF won’t open for example, the PDF may be damaged. ' The file “macreports.pdf” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it. If you do see this message, see the next section to learn how to fix it. Sometimes you may get a message when you want to view a PDF, like the one below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is a third-party app used by many as well.

Preview is the built-in app for image and PDF files.

Most people use Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader as their default PDF readers. It is essential to be able to open these documents. I receive and send many PDF documents daily for business or personal reasons as email attachments on my Mac. PDF documents are one of the most commonly used file types. If you struggle to open a PDF in Mail, we’ll go through a possible reason your PDFs won’t open and how to quickly solve the issue. It appears that this problem affects Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader, which are the most used apps for opening PDFs. Users have said that they can only open a PDF attachment they receive via email when they save it to their Mac first. This article describes what you can do when you are unable to open and view PDF documents in the Mail app on your Mac.

Cannot open pdf on mac