Opening PDF Using subprocess.Popen Failing

[Naftali]

On Friday, June 19, 2015 at 1:25:12 PM UTC-4, Naftali wrote:
> It actually doesn't fail but it 'cannot open in protected mode' (see here http://blogs.adobe.com/dmcmahon/2012/07/27/adobe-reader-cannot-open-protected-mode-due-to-a-problem-with-your-system-configuration/)
> 
> I am using subprocess.Popen("AcroRe32.exe /n <file.pdf>") which is the actuall adobe reader command I'd issue on the command line to open the pdf (the /n option opens it the file in a new instance of reader).
> 
> Now, when I issue the command straight from powershell, the pdf opens no problem, but when I open in my script (whether a .py or py2exe) I get the pop up complaining that the PDF cannot be opened in 'protected mode.' One of the options is to open it anyways, which works. 
> 
> Looking into it (see the link in the first paragraph) my best guess is that it's due to something like "JS-invoked processes: Launching a process through JavaScript is not allowed with Protected Mode enabled." 
> 
> But my naive understanding was that when I give Popen instruction, the command is handed off to windows and the called program is unaware of how it got called, so my thinking is that either that is incorrect or windows somehow 'cooperates' with reader to figure things out. 
> 
> I am looking for *any* insight as to how to deal with this, and the 'turn off protected mode" option wont work for me. 
> 
> Here is my code,
> 
> outputname = " unlocked.pdf"
> 
> commandstr = "qpdf --decrypt " + sys.argv[1] + outputname
> os.system(commandstr)
> 
> new_command_str = "AcroRd32.exe /n" + outputname
> subprocess.Popen(new_command_str)
> 
> sys.exit(0)

Thank you, Robin, just got in, happy Monday. I don't think it's the path because I added the acrobat exe to my path env variable which is why it didn't crash and burn. I tried running it via the standard prompt (as opposed to powershell) and ran into the same issue but the prompt gave a bit more information the power shell, in that it said 'open unlocked.pdf: Permission denied. based on your success I'm thinking that it has to do with the qpdf creates the file. I'm going to play around with that and will update. thank you so much for your help.