How To Protect Your PDF Documents Against Copying and Printing

The content of the PDF documents you share on the Internet can be easily copied using the Copy function, available by default by right-clicking on a paragraph or the entire document. If you do not want this to happen, you can set a password to restrict the use of this function only to users who know it. For this, you can use the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC program, which will also allow you to restrict the use of the print function.

Protect Your PDF Files Against Copying and Printing

To protect your PDF files against copying and printing, download Adobe Acrobat Pro DC on your computer, and run it.

Then, go to File > Open, and select the PDF on your hard drive. Go to Tools > Protection > Encode > Encode with password. In the Permissions section, check the Restrict document editing and printing box. In the Printing allowed field, select None.

Enter a password in the Change permissions password field. Check that the Check copy text, images, and other content box is clear. In Compatibility, choose a version of Adobe Acrobat that is equal to or less than the Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader version of the recipient. Click the Accept button, and confirm the password.

Save the document for the changes to take effect. After this, a lock will appear in the left sidebar of the PDF. If you right click on a paragraph, you will notice that the Copy option no longer appears. In addition, the print button will have been disabled.

N.B. There are free web programs and services that also allow you to remove the copy and print protection of PDF documents.

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