PDFs locked and will not unlock

HI everyone. I'm working across three iMacs and having persistent problems across all three. Using Sequoia 15.3.1 and Microsoft Word 16.94

Save a document as a PDF saves a document that is locked. I can manually open the read write permissions but the lock icon is still locked no matter what. I've tried dozens of work arounds including opening the PDF in preview and exporting it as a PDF and trying again to unlock. This will work with the read write permissions but NOT the lock icon.

Any suggestions?

Thanks