Apple - Preview refuses to open pdf file, incorrectly claiming a permission issue
quitting preview was enough to fix it for me.
After searching on the net I found a solution, following mainly this suggestion, though only deleting a small sub-directory:
I removed the sub-directory
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState
I quit Preview and re-started it.
PS: In recent versions of macOS the save state is kept in ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.Preview.savedState
.