Printing in Safepay - PDF printing now available
I am very annoyed that I can't print to a PDF file and I can't change printers when I want to print. This restriction is making me think that I've chosen the wrong product. If this is not "fixed" when my renewal comes around, I will go elsewhere for my online security.
Comments
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Hello @Ekim and welcome to the Community!
Are you using a physical printer or a virtual printer (such as NitroPDF, PDF Creator or Microsoft XPS)?
Virtual printers are not supported in Safepay. Most virtual printers open windows in the initial desktop and block Safepay's secure desktop while waiting for your input. In the event you are using a physical printer, turn OFF firewall, restart Safepay and check if you can print afterwards.
Regards
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Yes, it is so inconvenient not to be able to use a virtual print to PDF facility that I disabled Safepay. I set print to PDF as my DEFAULT PRINTER but Safepay still won't allow it. It looks so silly that I had to use my phone to photograph the screen!
I agree with Ekin - I will look at other solutions once my subscription expires, if this way of doing things is not resolved.
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The reason I want to print to PDF in Safepay is that I am away from my desk/office. I need the option of printing say a financial institution receipt or other legal document and having it available to add as an email attachment and to have the convenience of printing it whenever and wherever I like. I hit print in Safepay, the screen blinks and I have no idea if anything at all happened. Then when I go back into Settings, Printers I find it has printed multiple times to the default printer which of course is not connected. Not good enough and not I believe too difficult to solve.
My only other option is to transact outside of Bitdefender VPN and Safepay which defeats the purpose and as a new customer makes me question whether I chose the right supplier.
Please respond.
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Hello @iwood and welcome to the Community!
Are you using a physical printer or a virtual printer (such as NitroPDF, PDF Creator or Microsoft XPS)?
In the event you are using a physical printer, turn OFF firewall first. Restart Safepay and check if you can print afterwards. If this works, add your printer IP to Network exceptions in Firewall settings using this article:
If you are using a virtual printer, as per my above comment, kindly be advised that virtual printers are not supported in Safepay. Most virtual printers open windows in the initial desktop and block Safepay's secure desktop while waiting for your input.
I hope the information is helpful. Please note that you can also enable a VPN connection when using a virtual printer and this way all data transmitted will be safely encrypted.
Regards
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Hi,
@Alexandru_BD I can understand the reasons for not printing to a virtual printer. However, as you can see in this thread (and you might have numbers on how often people are visiting this page, because they have the same problem), this is something essential for most of us. There has to be a possibility to save a PDF of a printout. If this can't be done (for stated reasons) with the mechanisms provided by windows, it has to be implemented as a part of Safepay. I can't stress this enough. This is a knock-out criterion. I have been using Safepay despite this major lack but I've had enough now. Are you serious that you expect users to accept that printing to a real printer and scanning the printout is the only way to get (a non-searchable) pdf?
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Hello @HTH7 and thanks for joining the conversation here.
You are right, I can see that this thread has 103 views 🙂 Indeed, this topic has been brought into discussion before and I have also submitted a feature request to our development teams, on behalf of the members of this community, as we have seen interest for this over time.
Personally, I agree that it's something useful and the developers have not dismissed the idea entirely, nor have they confirmed it will be implemented. So, we'll just have to wait and see if it's something they would consider doing in the future. Feature requests are collected from various sources and sometimes they cannot be confirmed, nor declined on the spot, because even though some features may not make their way into production now, they can still be revised later on and considered in future development stages.
It goes without saying that not all ideas will be implemented, of course. If a suggestion is declined from start, usually we announce this and argue the reason behind the decision. As with all new features, they must meet many criteria and certain standards of usage and security, but as a general rule, if the slightest security concern or vulnerability is discovered, the respective feature will not make it into production.
I will follow up on this specific feature.
Regards
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Printing to pdf in Safepay is now a necessary that Bitdefender need to implement since we are talking about environment issues and going green with lesser carbon footprint.
This feature has been requested by users many YEARS ago but the company could not provide a solution shows that it doesn't listen to the customers.
If You're Not Listening To Your Customers, Another Brand Will
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Reading this I understand there are legit reasons to want to print a PDF on a virtual printer for later use (although a download would be more convenient, but I digress). I think the best option would be to add a new setting - something like "Allow printing to virtual printers" - default OFF, like now, and for the users that need to allow printing to such printers, setting this option to ON will not block the printing.
Another thing that I will propose will be to be able to select the printer, showing non-virtual printers when the previous option will be OFF or all of them when it's ON.
This will take a while - I need to propose this to management, get approved, push into the To Do list, deploy, test, release - the whole process. But if it gets approved, it will be done.
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I need virtual printer useable also in Bitdefender. Until this problem is not solved, I will not use it. :-(
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SafePay is a very important part of Bitdefender.
But being able to print to PDF file or PDF printer is an absolute necessity to SafePay.
How this functionality managed to escape the design board is mind-boggling. Because it makes no sense to log in to SafePay to do for instance "banking stuff" and afterwards having to do "banking stuff" outside of SafePay in order to print documentation. That is simply highly ineffective workflow and also a security risk.
Thus it is mandatory to be able to save at least a PDF file as a digital print as documentation when doing "banking stuff" and so it _must_ be a feature of SafePay.
It shouldn't be up for debate, but by all means give me your best shot.
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I agree. It's not about a best shot, you are absolute right, and the software should be useful to the user, and respecting as much the main purpose of being more secure.
To get into more history details: Safepay was designed from the start as an insulated thing. There are a lot of things that can weaken the current protection or introduce vulnerabilities: file open/save dialogs; downloads; and, of course, printing.
Our idea was to avoid virtual printers because of two reasons:
1. there were (are) a lot of buggy printing solutions, which exhibits features like modal dialogs displayed in the default desktop (but with parent in Safepay) and therefore locking Safepay interface *de facto*. Yes, the user could switch back into the default desktop, click a Yes/No button, then switch back into Safepay, which was very cumbersome to do, and even worse, there was no indication that this happened because of a printer modal dialog. Others were simply crashing (one such printer driver computed page dimensions with height as 0, then divided width to height, which obviously lead to a divide by zero crash - that consumed me a week of debugging and it was necessary to modify the inner printing code to avoid this and return a special error).
2. Fake malware printers, where the user could think the page is printing, and in reality the whole page with financial and personal data was captured and sent to the bad guys. Needless to say, faking some mail is bad, but sending a page with all the banking data, reports, numbers and amounts is really bad.
So at the time when we decided that since this is a browser for personal use, the virtual printing did not make much sense, so we imposed the shielding of print to print only on non-virtual ports and to print on the default printer.
That was some 10 years ago. It seems the scenarios evolved in time, and, while it does make sense from a security point of view, we have to consider also these scenarios like virtual printing and printing to files.
The solution I am thinking on is similar with my previous comment; add an option, default OFF; allow the user to decide when printing if a virtual printer is allowed; maybe manage a list of Trusted printers; perhaps add another option "Allow saving to disk". This is not 100% clear for me, since the printing is - believe me - an immense can of worms both from the programming point of view.
Armed with this, I will push this into a story for our management, and one way or another we will deliver. I cannot say at this time when or in what form, but I am confident that it will not take many arguing to convince them the fact you stated - printing is an important part of banking usage and therefore we need to adjust our implementation to allow these scenarios as well.
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Any update on this print to pdf feature?
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Not to sound as an excuse for not getting it yet to the market, but the next thing is to bring Chromium from 116 to the current 118, bug fixes, and the PDF printing is among the next things to do in Safepay on the near horizon.
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Adding my two cents here. Reading through the thread, it has been over a year since this was opened and still no solution? I used to recommend this software quite often to other folks but lately I feel that there is no urgency to keep the software at the top of the pile of apps to use. Sadly I am looking around for other options.
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The feature is currently in development (by me), and I estimate it will be ready for testing during January. It is quite complex, I won't hide you that, and it requires quite a number of changes. But I will get it done.
My estimation is it will be released in Q1 2024, I cannot estimate at this time if I won't get interrupted by other emergencies.
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Other important efficiency suggestions for SafePay:
- Import/Export function of SafePay bookmarks.
- A simple calculator (eliminating the need to exit SafePay to do simple calculations).
- A simple notepad (eliminating the need to exit SafePay to do simple notes for later use).
- Support for mouse tilt-wheel function (SafePay supports back/forth mouse buttons, but not back/forth using mouse tilt wheel).
Any update on the status of PDF file printing from SafePay?
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PDF printing: in development. It will be released most likely at the end of February.
Thank you for the other suggestions. I will add them to the implementation queue as improvements.
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Update: print to PDF is implemented (using Windows optional feature "Print to PDF") and currentyly enters the testing. I am not sure how it will be on the end, but the bulk of the work is done.
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Update: PDF printing has been released into the market.
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You do not have to change the default printer to MS Print to PDF. Please go in Settings and set Allow print to PDF setting is enabled. This is added for legacy reasons, and to offer a fix for user encountering this particular problem.
I would appreciate if you can confirm that solved this problem, thank you.
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@camarie I am in Settings now (Bitdefender Total Security) and I do not see any option that allows me to set PDF printing. Under General I have Password Protection, Manage Password, Security Widget, Special Offers, Recommendation Notifications, Product Language and Dark Mode. Under Advanced there is Proxy Server, Manage Proxies and Product Reports. Is the PDF printing functionality on a different version than the one I have? Thank you.
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Hello @DeeKell,
You have to launch SafePay and go to its settings (3-dot menu on the top right-hand corner) to enable this feature as shown below. Then restart the device for the changes to take effect.
Regards,
Alex
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Open Safepay, click on the upper right three dots to open the menu and click Settings. "Allow print to PDF" is the new setting that should be enabled. This will install the Print to PDF feature (if it is not installed already) and enable it (if it is not already enabled) - if newly installed or enabled it might ask for a Safepay restart, or even a Windows restart if the feature indicates so. (In my experience it happened only once to a restart to be needed, and this after like 50+ uninstall/reinstall tests while developing - in fact it is the Print Spooler service which might need restart).
The version in which this was deployed is 27.0.40.173 (the current version as seen in the picture is 27.0.40.174 which contains a fix unrelated to this feature).
Judging from the fact you do not see the setting I think your installation is not updated to 27.0.40.173 (or 174), so please update your product to the latest version and verify if the new setting is present, change it from OFF to ON (read the paragraph above if a Safepay or Windows restart is needed).
To use the feature, navigate to a PDF document and from the same menu invoke the Print to PDF… which should work now by saving the generated PDF into the downloads location like this:- navigate to a PDF document location
- after invoking, the document is printed and saved to a local PDF document
After this, from the confirmation dialog Open will switch to the default desktop and open the newly generated file into the default PDF viewer (Acrobat Reader, Google Chrome etc.), while Open directory will open explorer with the new file selected.
Hope this answer to your questions. Would appreciate your feedback.
Regards,
Cristian4 -
Great, comprehensive and insightful reply from @camarie on this one. Many thanks! 👍️
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Hello @camarie
Thank you for your very complete answer which will be especially useful to help my neighbor who discovers and starts with Bitdefender Total Security.
Regards,
Windows 11 Famille 23H2
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.70 GHz
Bitdefender Ultimate Security Individual
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Hello,
I enabled Allow Print to PDF as shown - and restarted my device.
I then tried to print, and it brought up a dialogue box stating that "Virtual printers are not supported in Bitdefender Safepay. To be able to print in Bitdefender Safepay, please set your physical printer as default in the Printers & scanners option in Windows".
I then tried setting MS Print to PDF as the default - closed down Bitdefender & reopened. Tried to print. Same dialogue box. Tried MS XPS Doc Writer. Same dialogue box.
The version I have is 30.0.24.27, CEF version 123.0.7.2, last update 24/7/24 8.26pm.0 -
(As a side note: 30.0.24.27 is the version of core components, which is different from the version of the product. Please launch the About from the tray icon to get the product version - but if you have the Allow Print to PDF it means you are already on 27.0.40.173 or later).
Back to the virtual printing: please use the Print to PDF… command and not Print command from the menu, or the print icon from the embedded PDF document. These two (Print from the menu and print icon from the PDF document) are - at least for now - still bound to the previous behavior - which is to do the regular print and not the new print to MS Print to PDF route - and this is why I separated these two to (1) keep the legacy behavior and (2) add the possibility of PDF printing without compromising the virtual printing blocking.
The reason on why there are two separate commands, because there are two separate things - although it might not seems so at first. I will, however, try to merge these into a single one, so the single Print that will remain will detect itself if the context is a PDF to be printed or something else, and if is a PDF will action like Print to PDF… is invoked at this time, while for the rest it will behave as always did.
That is, without looking for excuses, a fairly complicated change for various internal reasons (I need to change the PDF extension, communication with the application… all sorts of details, very time consuming and error prone and needing tough testing). And I was keen to deliver the feature, albeit in this form with two commands, as quickly as possible to unlock the print to PDF for Safepay users.
I'm not sure when exactly I will be able to do the merge back into a single command, but it is on my list. As usual, when such a change will occur it will be announced on forums via the usual updates announcement.
As usual, the feedback is very welcome. Please let me know now it works correctly.
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Hello again,
Can confirm that I have now printed to PDF - thank you so much; you guys are awesome! Will definitely renew my sub when it's due.
Dee.
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Truly appreciate it. As I said, I will try to squeeze the Print button unification with the Print to PDF… so at least to try to reduce the complexities of user interface.
Thanks for the patience and great feedback !
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While I can print to PDF from Safepay, the file always in the default mode of the "Print to PDF" printer (portrait in my case), is always named snapshot.pdf or snapshot(1).pdf, etc. The file always goes to the folder \Users\%username%\Downloads\Bitdefender Safepay. Also any files downloaded from a web site always go to that same folder.
I need to be able to choose both the location and name of each file that I print or download just as I can when I am not using Safepay. I also need to be able to change back and forth between portrait and landscape mode from within Safepay. I should not have to print a file in one orientation, log out, change the default orientation in the "Print to PDF" printer settings, and then log back in again to print another file. Please give some consideration to letting Safepay have access to those Windows print features. Thank you.
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All points valid. The reasons I did not implement yet print preview (and pick save location and filename) are technical, as well as the time - I promised in February to release Print to PDF as quickly as possible as it was a blocker for many users.
Tomorrow I will fill a new improvement issue to fix and release these changes. Me or my colleagues will announce in forum about the progress and/or release date.
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@camarie: Thank you for working on these suggested changes. I am sure that you have a lot on your plate and I appreciate the effort you are making.
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Appreciate it, thanks. Indeed I don't suffer from being bored, so to speak. Have to update to latest Chromium (130 as we speak) first, then I hope to continue working on this one, too.
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30 Oct 2024, product version 30.0.25.51. I am trying to Print to pdf from Bitdefender Safepay. Nothing happens, no pop-ups or messages. The folder \Users%username%\Downloads\Bitdefender Safepay is empty. There is no file named snapshot(1).pdf on the disk. About a month ago, I was able to print one document using this function. Now this function does not work again. It is very sorry that Bitdefender software products work so unstable. It is a pity that I had to lose a financial document due to unsatisfactory work.
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@ludr15 I did not changed the printing implementation, so I assume for now either was a transient error condition of some kind - most likely involving the print spooler and/or Print to PDF feature - or you really hit a bug (which, if this is the case, I would like to reproduce it).
Can you please describe more details about this? Because I just tested on a Windows 11 and, while it prints correctly a PDF with one page, for multiple pages Microsoft Print to PDF feature (which Safepay uses) seems to produce a PDF file of length zero (while not reporting any print failure). For example, with the file above file-example_PDF_1MB.pdf it fails, while a single page PDF prints successfully.
The same behavior I see in Chrome and Firefox as well, so it appears to be something not related to our product.
What did appears to fix this (for me) was:
- open Windows Features (click on the start button and type windows:features to open the Turn Windows Features on or off)
- from the Windows Features opened window, look for Microsoft Print to PDF (it should be checked)
- uncheck Microsoft Print to PDF to disable the feature
- reopen Windows Features and this time check Microsoft Print to PDF to re-enable it
- retry printing the PDF from Safepay.
(A note: even after this, it seems large - 300+ pages - still fails to print using Microsoft Print to PDF printer, I am investigating this one).
Please let me know if this fixes the issue.
PS A note: the resulting filename is no snapshot(1).pdf, it was just an example: if you print to PDF, for example, https://file-examples.com/storage/fe5f9cbfeb6722a469d332b/2017/10/file-example_PDF_1MB.pdf,Errorthe resulting file in Downloads\Bitdefender Safepay will be file-example_PDF_1MB.pdf, file-example_PDF_1MB(1).pdf etc. using the default Windows autonumbering existing file names.
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@ludr15 Update: I just installed on a Windows 10 and printed successfully the 360-pages document (https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf) using Safepay's Print to PDF feature (it produced a 123 MB PDF file).
At this time I assume it seems to be a problem on Windows 11. Can you tell me what operating system are you running (Windows 11, 10 or other) and what version?
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So, correct me if wrong but it appears that you're telling us to change the Windows default printer to "Print to PDF" before we try to access a website we want secured through Safepay so we have that print option during a Safepay session. We have a physical Epson printer that we use most of the time and is our default. Changing the default in Windows seems problematic simply to get a PDF print from Bitdefender. That option should come up when using the Bitdefender Safepay print function, i.e. a list of potential printers that we can choose from (pulled from the choices in Windows). Secondarily, the print option in Safepay appears to be an "all or nothing" choice, i.e. you have to print all pages of whatever you're looking at with no option to select pages to print or to print on both sides of the paper as the Windows print routine offers. Wastes paper and ink/toner if you don't need all of it. These issues have been a constant source of irritation for my wife and I since we moved to Bitdefender from Kaspersky earlier this year. Response?
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No. The feature is intended to use the Print to PDF… command, which in turn will use the "Microsoft Print to PDF" Windows feature's printer without the need of changing the default printer.
So as in your setup, Epson can still remain the default printer for the regular printing and for Print… command in Safepay, while the Print to PDF (emphasis on the command different than Print) will use "Microsoft Print to PDF" directly without the user intervention. They are two different commands - and there were proposals to unify them into a single one, which I agree it is useful and it is something I will implement.
About the all or nothing choice, you are right. Without going back too far in history, the simplicity of the printing was by design for these purposes:
- Safepay running in a secure desktop interacting with various printers interfaces, which sometimes (I saw myself cases) displayed blocking dialogs in the default desktop not visible to the user; needless to say, this blocked the entire interface of Safepay and the user had to log off or restart
- various open/save dialogs allowed malicious extensions running in explorer to perform commands such as open executables from withing a, let's say, Save As… dialog; there are multiple such external windows (Select printer, directory to export, custom various dialogs implemented by various vendors etc) which can cause all sorts of troubles
- printing on malicious non-local printers could intercept and send valuable informations to unknown actors, since to vouch for various printers installed in the world would be almost impossible (this is why until Print to PDF we excluded virtual printers)
But since the need for customization is real, I will fill in an task for implementing this as well. This will really complicate the need for security, I won't try to hide, but I will probably settle for a compromise by allowing only the default (or at least all of the physical and none of the virtual) printers as well as the excepted "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer, while allowing the paper size, dimensions, page range etc to be customized.
Does it sounds as an acceptabele way to go ?
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I do appreciate the security issues that this can cause, but I do think that adding your proposed changes to customize the print function in Safe Pay would make it a lot friendlier to use. It is one more way to make Bitdefender easier for the user and that's the key to more subscriptions I should think… Thank you for looking into this.
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100% agree. At least the part of picking the page ranges/letter size/printer/header/footer and merging the Print… and Print to PDF… into a single command to eliminate the need (and the occasional confusion) for two print commands. I'm not sure yet about letting Print Preview yet, for this I have to do a full proof of concept since it is a big change. But it is on my list; I do not know at this time when I can get it done since I have a huge TODO list, but I'm on to it. As usual, I will announce here about progress and details when it will see the market.
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Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, none of your tips helped.
I am using Windows 10. Bitdefender Safepay product version is 30.0.25.51. I followed all your recommendations about "Windows Features Microsoft Print to PDF" that you described above. I do not have any printers connected to my desktop computer. So, I do not use the "Print" menu item, I only use the "Print to PDF" menu item. I am trying to print pages with information about a bank payment. As a rule, this is one, maximum two pages to print. I tried to perform "Print to PDF" in different situations: a) When only one page is open in Bitdefender Safepay; b) When 2 or more tabs are open in Bitdefender Safepay; c) When any other browser (Mozilla, Chrome) is open in Windows; d) When all browsers and all applications are closed in Windows (only Bitdefender Safepay is open). In all cases, after clicking on the menu item "Print to PDF" nothing happens. The folder C:\Users\admin\Downloads\Bitdefender Safepay is empty. At the same time, I want to note that I have already used the "Print to PDF" function using this desktop and this system. The version of the Bitdefender Safepay product was earlier. That time everything worked fine. The name of the saved file was exactly snapshot(1).pdf.I need to have confirmation of all financial transactions. But I can't print them. That is why using Bitdefender Safepay is impossible for me. Without Bitdefender Safepay the whole concept of Bitdefender security is broken.
I hope for your help.
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Tomorrow I will look into it at once. Can you tell me what is the product version (not the one from Safepay, the one displayed from the regular desktop > tray icon > About) and what OS version you are running? You really might have hit a bug and I ddo want to fix it, if this is the case, or at least to understand it.
Can you open a support ticket, please? This helps with speeding things up, perhaps collecting logs to diagnose the issue if that is an option.
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Thank you for your attention and response.
Product version is "Bitdefender Internet security" 27.0.42.214. Last updated 30 Oct 2024 11:16AM. My system parameters are as follows: 64-bit Windows 10 Pro operating system; OS build 19045.4894; Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19060.1000.0.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to open the support ticket. What should I do for this?0 -
I think the support link is this:
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Yes, that's the one. Click on that link, state your contact reason / choose request category, then choose from the available contact channels, chat, phone and email/ticket. Chat would be the fastest way to reach them.
Should you choose the contact form, you will also receive a ticket number that you can share here, so we can track it.Regards
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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According to your recommendations, I tried to contact the support service. But I can't do it. The email address that I enter in the corresponding field is incorrect. I have no idea what the email address should looks like from Bitdefender's point of view. I can't send a message to the support service. I surprised very much!
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Maybe there is an involuntary space? I tried to type the email from the image and it worked just fine.
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@ludr15 kindly be advised I have removed your screenshot, since it displayed your email address in full and this is a public forum, after all. I believe camarie is right, maybe there's a space there, try not to c/p the email address and enter it manually. Refresh that page, if necessary, and delete the cache & cookies beforehand. It should work. If not, chat would be a faster option.
Let us know how it goes.
Premium Security & Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools user
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Thank you for your attention and for your time.
But can't contact support anyway. This time I didn't receive a notification about invalid email. But after I clicked the "Submit" button the page freezes. About 1 minute later the verification block "I am not a robot" turns red again and asks for identity confirmation. However, the page remains frozen and I can't do anything on the page. I waited for the page to unfreeze for about half an hour but in vain.I tried to do the same action three times. The result is the same. I still can't send a request to support. If I haven't annoyed you yet, please help me.
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