How to password protect a PDF in few steps

PDF documents have password-protected encryption support built directly into their format. And it doesn’t matter if you are running Windows or MacOS, there are some different methods to password protect a PDF.
If you are interested in learning how to do more with your PDF files, we also have an excellent list of third party tools to secure and or convert word to PDF files such as PDFbeaver.com, as well as another guide on how to convert a PDF file to Excel.

Password protect a PDF using Adobe Acrobat

Step 1: Head over to the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC free trial page and click the blue Start button. You will have to register to obtain an Adobe Creative Cloud account, giving your name, your email address and creating a new password. (If you are already subscribed to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and have the program installed, you can go to step.You’ll also need to enter a payment method for Adobe to charge you after the trial period, so be sure to cancel before this date if you don’t want to keep the subscription.

Once you’re signed in, click the sign-in button at the bottom of the forms. The download will start from there.

Step 2: If you don’t already have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you will need to install the DC Pro version; otherwise it will simply update what you already have. If it asks if you want to buy or just continue your trial for now, choose the Continue option.

Step 3: Once Adobe Acrobat Pro DC has been downloaded, make sure to Login using the link in the upper right corner. Then click on the File menu in the upper left corner and select Open. Choose the PDF file you want to password protect and click the Open button.

Step 4: Click on the File menu again when you see the document open, followed by Properties, and then click on the Security tab.

Step 5: Click the drop-down menu next to Security Method, then select Password Security from the list of options.

Step 6: A window should appear asking for a password. Check the box next to ” Require a password to open the document “, and enter the password you want to give the PDF document in the corresponding text field.

If you send this password to other people, it is probably better to choose one that you do not use for other services. Recent versions of Adobe will value even how vulnerable or easy to guess the password you choose will be, so try to choose a password that has a good rating. Preferably one that includes a combination of lowercase, uppercase and numbers.

If you’re worried about forgetting it, you can always use a password manager.

How to convert Word documents to PDF with the “Save As” function in Word

A simple possibility to convert Word to PDF is the one that offers the “Save as” function integrated in the versions published from 2007. Click on the “File” tab and then on “Save as”.

You can then make other adjustments, such as optimizing the PDF document and preferably keeping it small. This is especially useful when your email provider or your favorite online tool only allows you to upload documents with a small storage size. The “Options” tab also allows you to encrypt PDF documents.

If you want to have more control over your final PDF document, it is recommended that you use a special tool. If you are looking for a simple solution to go from Word to PDF, the Word function described above is completely sufficient.

Using Special Word to PDF Converters

Generally, special software to convert Word to PDF offers more features than the implemented function of Microsoft Word. Since programs that allow you to edit PDF directly are very expensive, in many cases it is enough to use a free tool such as PDFbeaver.com. These usually install a specific printer driver to perform the conversion, so that they allow you to transfer Word documents to PDF using the print function. The printer displays the file as it would print. If the document is stored in the preview as a PDF file, you get the exact same document without formatting.

PDF Beaver (Windows)

The free PDF converter tool that allows you to convert Word documents to PDF and other file including webpage to PDF, html to PDF, PNG to PDF etc. In addition, the tool also offers numerous encryption functions, digital signatures, and the ability to combine multiple PDFs. This is a free tool which you can multiple times to convert documents into PDF online. you can also use into your phone to convert files like html to PDF and PNG to PDF.

If you click on “Convert”, PDFBeaver opens, a tool with which you can make some adjustments before converting the document from Word to PDF using the “Save” option.

Through the “Settings” feature you can use numerous options, ranging from encryption to automatic storage. Using the “Merge” option, the current document can be added to another PDF file, making it possible to combine several Word documents into a single PDF file in a simple way. The “E-Mail” function allows you to attach PDF files directly to the e-mail and, through the “Save” option, they are stored on the computer.

How to Protect Documents and PDFs with Owner and User Passwords in LibreOffice

There are two ways to protect a PDF file: owner password and user password. We will explain the purpose of each of them and show how to apply them to your PDF files.

Owner Password or Permissions allows you to apply permissions to the PDF file. For example, if you do not want to allow printing of a PDF file or extracting pages, you can choose what you want to allow rather than allow and apply the owner password to the PDF file. The owner password can also be called a master password. This is what allows you to change these permissions.

User or Open password allows you to require the user to enter a password even to view PDF. If they do not enter the correct password, the PDF file will not open.

There are several online services for protecting PDF files, such as PDFBeaver, but if you want to add a password to a confidential document, you are probably not comfortable uploading it to an unknown service. So, in this guide we will focus on the best offline mode.

We looked at how to create a password-protected PDF file in Microsoft Word, but this only adds the user password. There is no way to add an owner password. We did some research and found that the best option for protecting your webpage to PDF files offline is the free LibreOffice office suite. We will show you how to password protect a Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer document and how to create a password-protected PDF file from the document.

NOTE. We use the Word file in our example, but you can do the same with LibreOffice Writer documents (.odt files). You can also open PDFs in LibreOffice. They open in LibreOffice Draw, even if you use Writer, Calc or Impress, but the procedure for protecting them with a password in Draw is the same as in other LibreOffice programs, and is described in the section “How to Convert a Document to a Password-Protected PDF File” below. You will convert an unprotected PDF file to a password protected one.

How to convert a document to a password-protected PDF file

You can also convert a Word document or a LibreOffice document to a password-protected PDF file and apply user and owner passwords to it. To do this, open the document, and then select Export to PDF from the File menu.

In the PDF Options dialog box, click the Security tab. In the section “Encryption and resolution of files” initially there is “Open password not set” (user password) and “Access password not set” (owner password). To set these passwords, click Set Passwords.

In the “Set Passwords” dialog box, in the “Set Open Password” section, double-enter the user password that is required to view the PDF file. In the “Set access password” field, enter the owner’s password, which will not allow printing, editing or extracting the contents of the PDF file. Click OK. You will return to the “PDF Settings” dialog box, and the status of the set passwords will be displayed under the “Set Passwords” button. If you decide to set a permission (owner) password, the parameters in the right part of the dialog box will become active. If you do not want anyone to print a document or make any changes to it, select “Not Allowed” in the “Printing and Changes” section. If you just want to limit the type of print and possible changes, select another option in the Print &Change section.

If you do not want anyone to copy the content from your PDF file, make sure the “Enable copying of content” checkbox is cleared. In order to ensure accessibility, it is recommended to leave the “Enable text access for accessibility tools” checkbox checked. Click Export. In the Export dialog box, navigate to the folder where you want to save the password-protected PDF file. Enter the file name in the “File Name” field and click “Save.”

If you assigned an open (user) password to the PDF file, it will be requested the next time you open it. You will see “(PROTECTED)” to the right of the file name in the title bar, indicating that it is an encrypted PDF file.
If you applied a permission (owner) password to the PDF file and decided not to allow printing, you will notice that the “Print” option is not available when you click the “File” tab.
The procedures for adding open and permitted passwords to a document and converting the document into a password-protected PDF file you can also convert HTML to PDF and process of protecting is same in LibreOffice Calc, Impress, and Draw.