Every now and then you encounter brain-dead PDF forms, for instance ones that have:
- tab order totally mixed up
- formatting if fields in the wrong way
- actions that clear (part or all) upon loading, saving or even moving to different fields
For those cases, especially if you need to return them in print form, it is easiest to just add new text fields so it is easier to fill them out in a readable form (trust me, my handwriting is at doctors level, so even I cannot always read it).
Welcome to the world of “This is a secured document. Editing is not permitted.”!

These all did NOT solve the problem for most of the PDF files I encountered:
The easiest way to work around this for me is to use MacOS Preview to open the PDF, then export the PDF to a new file. This way, the protection will be removed from the new file.
I later found similar options being mentioned in [WayBack] How to remove security from a PDF file? – Super User.
I might try pdftk in the future based on [WayBack] linux – Removing PDF usage restrictions – Super User.

–jeroen
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