How to Protect PDF from Copying and Editing – Easy Tips

Introduction: A major part of working online is working with PDF documents. If you want to protect your PDF from copying and editing and save your original work from editing then you need to keep it secure. In the blog, we will mention two methods. You can choose any of the methods that best suits your preferences. However, if you are looking for a smooth process and a user-friendly interface, use a dedicated Password Protection Tool. This tool provides advanced features and has simple steps. Moving on to learn how to lock PDF from editing, we will first learn about PDF.

PDF (Portable Document Format), is one of the most commonly used file formats for sharing information across platforms. The portability and compactness feature of PDF files makes it a universal document. They securely preserve crucial information, particularly in sensitive sectors such as healthcare, government, and finance. PDF is a frequently used document-sharing medium. Such documents may contain valuable trade secrets of the company, relating to manufacturing processes, design, tests, commercial information, etc.

While formatting usually remains intact when saving a document, it is sensitive to copying and editing. If documents are available to everyone, it is important to find a way to prevent pdf from being copied.

Scenario: Consider a government office, where classified information about national security is in a PDF document. Recognizing the sensitivity of the data, the government needs to safeguard it from unauthorized access. It is needed to add edit strict copy and editing restrictions on the PDF.

Therefore, the best way to solve the problem is to lock PDF files from editing, printing, and copying. Here, both manual and automatic ways are available, let’s discuss them one by one.

Manual Method to Protect PDF From Copying and Editing

To protect PDFs from copying, changing, or printing you should encrypt the document with a password you can use the Manual method. Although there are some online tools available, they are not very useful as you can easily remove PDF Document restrictions. For the manual method, you need to install Adobe Acrobat in your system and then follow the following steps:

• Open the PDF File in Adobe Acrobat you wish to protect.
• Choose the Tools menu and then select the Protection
• Then, click on Encrypt and choose the option Encrypt with a Password
• Click on Yes and provide the confirmation.
• Now, click on the Compatibility drop-down menu.
• Find the Encrypt All Document Contents and click on it.
• Tick on Restrict editing and printing of the document and enter the password. Make sure to remember the password as this password will lock your document.
• Uncheck the option Enable Copying of Text, Images, And Other Content box and click

Further, you can disable copy and paste in PDF. So that those who have the password you set in the above process can open and view your PDFs, but cannot edit them. You can also create a password for editing so they can make changes to the document. Additionally, you can select the option from the dropdown if you want to allow them to print and make changes.

Automatic Method to Protect PDF from Copying

If you want a solid solution to protect pdf from copying without password, you can encrypt your document using a Tool. Permission passwords created with the SysInfo PDF Protection Tool are heavily encrypted and only those who have the password can access them. The tool provides 8 types of protections including protections from copying, changing, printing, signing, document assembly, and more.

Mentioned below are simple steps to lock PDF files from editing printing copying:

• Download and launch the PDF protection tool on your system.
• Click on the Add Files button to add PDF files you wish to protect.
• Choose the Encryption level from the available options.
• Enter the Owner Password and User Password.
• Now, choose from the options for permissions you want to give.
• Edit the metadata and click on the Protect button and you are done!

This is how easily you can protect a PDF from being copied, within a few simple steps.

Special Features of PDF Protection Tool

The PDF Protection Tool has special features that differentiate our tool from other tools available. Some of them are given below:

• The tool facilitates independent saving by defining the location of new output files.
• It supports single as well as multiple PDF files at a time which makes the task easy if you have multiple files.
• Provides 8 types of protection to files.
• The tool is compatible with all Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, and others.

Conclusion

In this blog, we discussed the methods to protect PDF from copying, if there is any sensitive data or information in the document. We have provided both the manual and automatic methods for the protection but the automatic method is a more cost-effective solution. You can download the trial version of the tool to get how it works. However, if you want to convert larger documents without watermarks you will need to purchase the premium tool.