Protect pdf files from printing, copying and editing is a fairly productive method of preserving your works, as well as effective method protect yourself from unscrupulous customers.

Many popular programs(AutoCAD, Word, Excel, etc.) used in preparing documentation have a built-in virtual printer, which allows you to prepare a document for printing and save it as a pdf file.

PDF file s this universal format, which allows you to print a document on most devices without any programs, and there are also many free paid programs For view pdf files. Thus, by saving the documentation in pdf files, the customer does not have to install different programs for each type of file.

Protecting pdf documents from printing and copying

Let's consider a case where you need to protect already existing files pdf from printing and copying. I assume you have no desire to spend money on purchasing paid programs, so we will traditionally use free legal software using the example of PDF Blender, which, in addition to protection, can combine several files into one.

First of all, let's install PDF Blender in order to protect the pdf document.

1. Download the archive with prepared distributions for free by clicking.

Information that the program is distributed free of charge and installation instructions can be found on the developer's page.

2. Unpack the archive and install gs912w32.exe Ghostscript according to the instructions from the developer's website.

I didn’t delve into what Ghostscript is and why it is needed, but if you wish, you can read and download the latest version. Please note that you need a Windows distribution (32 bit).

3. Launch PDFBlenderSetup1.1.2.exe and install PDF Blender in the standard way.

4. Open PDFBlender and go to the window Preferences by pressing the Alt+Enter key combination or selecting File → Preferences from the menu.

5. In the field Path to gswin32c.exe: by clicking on Browse… indicate the corresponding file located C:\Program Files (x86)\gs\gs9.12\bin\gswin32c.exe or something similar and click Save.

This is the installation and presets completed.

A program to protect a pdf file with a password. How to use

1. Launch the program and drag necessary files in the field Source or add by clicking on the button Add Files...

3. Keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S or in top menu File → Document Security open the window of the same name.

4. In the field Select specify the encryption type 40-bit (Acrobat 3.xorgreater).

5. In the field Open a password is set to open the file. I recommend it for more protection.

6. In the field Permissions a password is set to restrict actions with the document, marked with checkboxes below.

7. Close the window by pressing Save, and complete pdf protection by pressing the button Blend.

Note. The file will open when you enter any of the passwords. If you have set a password only to restrict printing, copying and pdf editing file, the file will open without a password, and the corresponding buttons will not be active.

Merge pdf free

Once again, I draw your attention to the fact that the PDFBlender program will allow you to combine several PDF files into one. To merge, add your files, edit the order using the buttons Move Up And Move Down and specify the name of the new file.

There is also alternative option- use the online service Free PDF tools located

1. Upload the PDF file by clicking on the button Review…

2. Set passwords to open and restrict printing and copying. Once again, please note that the file will be opened with any of the two passwords.

Note. Do not check the boxes, otherwise this action will allow printing, copying and editing pdf document.

3. After clicking the button Protect you will be prompted to download the encrypted file.

This resource will also help you split or combine PDF files.

Protect PDF files using PDFCreator

If you are only creating a pdf file from documents various formats, then it will be more convenient to use the free PDFCreator program.

Due to the cumbersomeness of the article, the description of working with PDFCreator had to be included in a separate lesson, which you can find by clicking.

How to protect pdf. Video tutorial

I'll write it down as soon as it's available free time, perhaps your comments will speed up...

Perhaps you have ever had the need to create your own PDF document with any information from where nothing could be copied?

In this article I will tell you how you can use a simple free program create a PDF file from a Word document and enable execution protection various actions, for example: copying any information from a document, making changes to a document, the ability to print a document, editing and adding comments.

Just in case, I’ll explain right away for beginners. PDF is a universal format designed for the most convenient display of text and graphic information. For example, PDF is very easy to read e-books, even on smartphones and tablets.

I have had the need to create a PDF document several times already. When I taught at a technical school, it was necessary to do good things for students practical tasks(“manuals” as we called them) for learning programming. And in this case, it is best if the student cannot simply take and copy entire examples of program code, but will type it manually. In this case, a better understanding of the material comes, and not just mindless copying. And then they began to convert documents from Word into PDF format with protection.

It was also necessary to create a book for its subsequent distribution on the Internet, which I also protected from copying and editing.

You will probably say: “Yes, but what’s the point? Whoever needs it will find a way to break the defense and that’s it!” The fact of the matter is that only those who really really want to do this will do this, and the majority will work with the document in the form in which they received it...

There are many ways to create a PDF document with copy protection. various programs, both paid and free. I even met online services, where you can convert the finished Word document to PDF. But such sites do not allow you to protect the document as you would like. As a rule, they do not provide such an opportunity at all. I also tried several programs and in many of them it was impossible to flexibly configure the protection, or the protection function was completely absent.

I settled on the PDF24 Creator program, which I was completely satisfied with its functionality and at the same time is free! Using the example of this program in conjunction with Microsoft Word, I want to show you how you can create and protect a PDF document!

The program is very simple, intuitive and you can protect a document without any problems in about 5 minutes :)

Let's start with installation...

Installation of a program for creating and protecting PDF documents - PDF24 Creator.

ru.pdf24.org

On the page that opens, select the option for private use by clicking “PDF24 Creator–Private”:

The download will begin installation file programs. The file is about 16 MB in size, so it will download quickly. Let's launch it and start the installation:

The installation is painfully simple, but let's look at it briefly.

In the next window we accept license agreement, checking the appropriate box and clicking “Next”:

Now we are given the opportunity to change the folder in the Start menu where shortcuts for launching the program will be stored. The default name PDF24 is clear in my opinion, so you don’t have to change anything. Click “Next” again:

Now click “Install” and the process of copying files to the installation folder will start:

And finally, in last window click “Finish”:

That's it, the program installation is complete and you can start working!

We create a PDF from Word and enable copy protection and information editing!

After installing the program, 2 shortcuts will appear on your desktop: PDF24 Creator and PDF24 Fax:

We don’t need the “PDF24 Fax” label, it is used to send a fax, so you can immediately remove it so as not to get in the way. And with the second shortcut (“PDF24 Creator”) we will launch the program.

When you start the program, you will see this window:

Let's assume we already have finished document Word, which we need to convert to an easy-to-read PDF format and prevent the ability to change and copy information.

First of all, we need to open our ready-made Word document in the program and this can be done in 3 ways: simply drag it to the right (highlighted in yellow in the screenshot below) part of the screen; in the Explorer window in the center of the program (highlighted in blue) and through the menu “File” > “Open” (highlighted in red):

The fastest way, of course, is to grab and drag the one you need Word file V right side windows.

After a few seconds, the document will be loaded into the program and displayed on the right side of the window:

If the document is very large (for example, 100 pages or more), then it may take about a minute or more to load.

Now, to convert the document to PDF format, click the button with the image of one floppy disk:

A similar button on the right (an icon of two floppy disks) will immediately convert all the documents that you transferred to the program.

A settings window will appear generated PDF file:

To achieve our goals, it is enough to set the parameters in just a few sections.

Let's start with the "Main" section.

Here it is very important to set the overall quality of the generated PDF document. The lower the quality, the smaller the final file size will be. But I believe that because of an extra couple of tens of megabytes, you can’t save on the quality of the document! Reading should always be as pleasant as possible! Well, the choice is, of course, yours :) For myself, I always set the best quality.

Also in this section it is better to change the PDF standard to “PDF1.5”. Then your document will be supported by all versions of the reading program - AcrobatReader. For some reason, other, later formats that PDF24Creator offers are not created. Perhaps the problem does not occur at all operating systems and will get better in the future.

The next section is “Info”. You may find these settings useful. Here we can set the author of the document, its title, keywords. All this data will be protected in created file without the ability for anyone to edit them.

But in order for this data to be visible in the file, do not forget to enable the “List of sources” item.

Section "Security". Now we have reached the most important section for us. This is where document protection is configured.

In order to enable protection, first of all you need to check the “Use security” checkbox. settings".

The program offers only one type of encryption.

Next, you configure specific rights for those who will receive your PDF document. You need to uncheck those actions that a user with access to your document will be prohibited from doing. For example, in my example (see image above), I only allowed document printing.

And the last function in this section, which may be useful for someone, is “Require a password to open.” If you enable this feature, in order to read the contents of the document, you will need to enter the password you specified.

Section "Watermarks". Here you can enable the display of a text watermark in the created document.

The text you specify will be located below the text or above the text (depending on what you select in the “Mode” line) in one of the eight parts of each page (“Location” item):

Please note that the text itself can only be written in Latin letters. Cyrillic characters will eventually be displayed as hieroglyphs!

Also in the same section you can configure the font, color, angle and indentation of the watermark.

At this point we have looked at the basic settings, and it’s time to save the document in PDF format. To do this, at the very bottom of the settings window, click the “Continue” button:

A window will open Windows Explorer, where you need to select a folder to save the document. Also specify the name of the document to be saved, then click “Save”:

In a few seconds the file will be saved and you can check the result!

Checking the generated PDF document.

Find our created document on the computer and open it:

Beginners should know that to open PDF files you need to have one of the following on your computer. special programs. For example, you will not open a PDF file as you need through regular Word, Notepad and other editors. The best free viewer PDF documents is famous program Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is free and you can download it from the official website here.

Having opened the document, scroll through it, see if everything is displayed as you would like:

Try highlighting the text and images and then try copying them Ctrl keys+ C. If you have configured everything correctly, you won’t be able to copy anything, and when you click right click mouse over the content, there will be no “Copy” item at all. So everything is fine :)

You can also open the document properties and check the authorship information if you entered it in the settings. To do this, open “File” and the “Properties” item:

If everything is in order everywhere, then great, you have created a document protected from copying and editing!

What should I do if the links in the created PDF document become unclickable?

It happens that links and navigation in a created PDF document become unclickable, i.e. – content of the document. I came across this problem, but it’s very easy to solve and here’s what you need to do.

To solve the problem, we first need Microsoft Word itself latest versions(I'm using 2013). Our task is to export to PDF format directly from Word, and then finish everything that needs to be done through PDF24 Creator.

And you ask: “Why then can’t you immediately protect a PDF file through Word and at the same time, since you can convert it into it?” The fact is that Word does not allow you to configure the protection of a PDF document, so we resort to the help of third-party programs :)

Here's what exactly needs to be done (I point to Word example 2013) :

Ready! After these manipulations, if the links and table of contents did not work in the document, everything will now work! Don't forget to check the created document again :)

That's all. Hope this information It will be useful for someone :)
All the best to you, have a great mood! See you in touch;)

Sandbox

knight with gun May 27, 2014 at 07:11 pm

Bypass copy protection in a pdf file

Since January of this year, I finally switched to Linux OS, and specifically to Ubuntu. I am a third-year student majoring in Computer Science and Computer Science. In the third year there is such an interesting subject - circuit design. And there is also information about them laboratory work which we can do at home and send to the teacher by e-mail. Since the teacher can use old version Microsoft Office, but I work in LibreOffice, errors may occur when opening odt on Microsoft Office, or when saving doc\docx in LibreOffice. I decided to save the work as a pdf file and send it to the teacher. In addition, he posts completed laboratory works on his website so that any student can familiarize himself with other works. Unfortunately, I have a negative trait - I don’t like people copying my text. I decided to protect the document from copying; I more precisely set a ban on copying and set a password.

In order to make sure that the document was properly created and protected from copying, I tried opening it in standard program view the pdf that is installed in Ubuntu - namely Evince. What a surprise I was when I discovered that the text could be easily copied. “Well, I saved it wrong,” I thought, and did the same steps again. I opened it a second time and again the text was easily copied.

Well, I was quite surprised and decided to send this pdf file to a friend. He said that he could not copy the text in any Foxit Reader, neither in Adobe Reader.

Well, the next completely logical step on my part - I asked him to download Evince. Good product with open source code and cross-platform. There were no problems with installation on Windows OS. My friend opened a protected pdf using a freshly installed Evince and was able to copy the text without any problems.

Conclusion: to bypass protection from copy pdf you can use the Evince program. This option is the most optimal and does not require any additional actions and is the most convenient option. In my opinion, of course.

I didn’t stop there, because perhaps the problem is in LibreOffice itself, you might think. I downloaded the Adobe trial Acrobat Pro and created a pdf file there and protected it with a password.

I got similar results, Evince did the job without any problems.

Tags: pdf, Evince

This article cannot be commented on since its author is not yet

1. Introduction

Most people will probably agree that there is confidential information, which you want to protect as much as possible from prying eyes. It just so happens that the majority electronic documents presented in pdf format. How can they be protected? With this article you will learn several ways to Howprotect pdf file, and another option will also be offered pdf file protection.

2. Ways to protect a pdf file

So, protect pdf file You can set a password to open it. This method is described in detail in the article: How to put a password on a pdf document? and Creating pdf files using PDF24 Creator.

Please note that in the above articles, a password is set when creating a pdf file.

3. New way pdf file protection

The methods proposed above imply pdf protection file when creating it. (How to create a pdf file was discussed in the articles: Creating pdf files using doPDF 7, PDFCreator - creating pdf and How to create a pdf file?) But what if you don’t need to create anything, because you already have a ready-made pdf file and you just need to protect it? About this we'll talk in this article.

For this task we will use the utility Vinsoft LockPDF. First you need to download and install Vinsoft LockPDF. After installation Vinsoft LockPDF the main window will open:

If appearance Vinsoft LockPDF If you don't like it, you can go to settings and change it.
Vinsoft LockPDFprotects pdf file from copying content to the clipboard, editing it, converting it and printing it. (How to convert is written in the article: How to convert pdf files and Wondershare PDF to Word Converter - PDF file converter).

4. Set up protection using Vinsoft LockPDF

Protect pdf by using Vinsoft LockPDF very simple. In the field “Select the PDF file to be closed” we indicate the file that we are protecting, and in the field “Select the directory where the file will be saved” - the place where Vinsoft LockPDF will create protected pdf file.

Please note, if the save directory of a protected file matches the source file, it will be overwritten and become protected. If a different directory is specified, then it will be created protected pdf file, and the source file will remain in original condition.
Screenshot:

Now click “Close PDF file”. In a few seconds everything will be ready. Vinsoft LockPDF will report:

So we protected pdf file.

5. Checking the installed protection

Now let's check how this protection works. First, let's open our protected file, for example, using PDF-XChange Viewer.

The screenshot shows that after the file name there is the word PROTECTED in parentheses. Let's try to print it:

So, the protection does not allow the file to be printed. What about exporting it to other formats?

The “Export/To image” option is also not active, which indicates that the protection we installed is working. The same situation will happen if we open protected pdf file using another program, for example, Adobe Reader 10 PORTABLE.

6. Removing protection...

And yet the protection we have installed can be removed. How to do this? Follow step by step instructions in the articles: Removing protection from pdf files using the PDF UNLOCKER utility and Advanced PDF Password Remover - removing protection from pdf files. Don’t be upset that we removed the protection of our pdf file quite quickly and simply. Not every computer user can remove protection from a pdf file. Installed protection serves as a good reminder of the confidentiality of your document and will do the job in most cases!

Limit who can open and use a PDF document. Encryption of a PDF document is performed to block the content of the file with a password, more often to introduce copyright restrictions. For example, an author allows pages to be printed but does not allow changes to be made to the document. We will continue with the " " section and explain how the pdftk program can encrypt and decrypt PDF documents. We'll start by describing the Acrobat Standard Security model ( Standard protection Acrobat) (named Password Security [ Password protection] in Acrobat 6) and the permissions you can grant or revoke.

PDF file attachments are also encrypted. Once an encrypted document is opened, attachments can only be opened, modified, or deleted if the owner has granted the ModifyAnnotation access right.

Page attachments behave differently than document attachments. When you open an encrypted document, you can open files attached to PDF pages regardless of access rights. Modifying or deleting one of these attachments requires the ModifyAnnotations privilege.

PDF passwords

Acrobat Standard Security allows you to define two passwords for a PDF document: a user password and an owner password. In Acrobat 6, these are called the Open password and the Permissions password, respectively.

A user password is required to view the document page. From it, the PDF document encryption key is obtained from the user password. When opening a PDF document that is protected by a user password, the viewer will prompt the reader for it.

The owner password is required to change document security settings. A PDF document with a set of user and owner passwords can be opened using any of them, so you need to be careful when choosing.

The owner password by itself does not provide any real protection PDF document. The content is encrypted, but the key derived from the (empty) user password is known. The owner password is a polite but firm request to respect the author's wishes. A hacking program can overcome this protection in a second. See the "Copy Protecting Your PDF Document" section for information on additional options rights management.

Reliability of standard security encryption

If the PDF document is compatible with Acrobat 3 or 4, then 40-bit encryption is used, otherwise the more complex 128-bit encryption is used. In both cases, the encryption key is created from the user's password, so a good, long, random password helps improve protection against head-on attacks. Longest possible password A PDF document can contain 32 characters.

Standard permissions

Install user password, if you don't want everyone to view your PDF document. If there is no user password, then it simply will not open.

You can also control what readers do after they open a document. The permissions associated with 128-bit security (Acrobat 5 and 6) are more granular than those associated with 40-bit security (Acrobat 3 and 4). The tables below list all access rights for each security model, as well as pdftk flags. The figure shows how to set permissions in Acrobat.

Permissions for 40-bit protection

Allow readers
	Printing
	ModifyContents
Copy text and graphics from pages, extract text and graphics data for further use	CopyContents
	ModifyAnnotations
	ModifyContents and ModifyAnnotations
All of the above	AllFeatures

Permissions for 128-bit security

Allow readers	Apply this permission in pdftk
Print pages with the highest quality	Printing
Print pages at the lowest quality	DegradedPrinting
Change the content of a page or document, insert or delete pages, rotate pages, add bookmarks	ModifyContents
Insert or delete pages, rotate pages, add bookmarks	Assembly
Copy text and graphics from pages	CopyContents
Extract text and image data for later use	ScreenReaders
Change or add comments, fill out form fields with data	ModifyAnnotations
Fill out form fields with data	Filln
Reconfigure or add form fields	ModifyContents and ModifyAnnotations AIFeatures
All of the above and the highest quality printing	AIFeatures

When comparing the tables, you can see that Assembly is a variant of ModifyContents, and Filln is a variant of ModifyAnnotations.

The DegradedPrinting permission sends pages to the printer as raster images, while Printing is in PostScript format. The PostScript stream can be interrupted and returned to an unprotected PDF document, so using the Printing permission introduces some risk, but the DegradedPrinting permission reduces the quality of printed pages.

Once access rights and/or a user password have been set, changing them requires the owner password.

Encrypted input and pdftk

When using the pdftk program, the owner's password must be provided for encrypted documents. If the document does not have one, a user password must be used. Otherwise, in a pdftk request, no password should be associated with this document.

Enter PDF passwords, listing them after the input file names, for example:

pdftk input_pw …

File descriptors specified in , are used to associate files with passwords in as follows:

=

For example: A=foopass

Adding this option to the example in the "Splitting and merging PDF documents (without Acrobat help)" looks like this:

pdftk A-in1.pdf B-in2.pdf C-in3.pdf \
input_pw A=foopass cat A1 Bl-end C5 output out.pdf

Using pdftk to encrypt output

Any PDF document created with the pdftk program can be encrypted by simply adding encryption options after the output file name, for example:

...output

\
\

Here is a description of the sections:

Determines the strength of the encryption. If it is not specified along with other encryption options, the default value is encrypt_l28bit.

Sets the owner password. If this section is omitted, the owner password is not set.

Sets the user password. If the section is omitted, no user password is set.

Adding these options to the example in the "Split and merge PDF documents (without Acrobat)" section looks like this:

pdftk A=in1.pdf B=in2.pdf C=in3.pdf \
cat A1 Bl-end C5 output out.pdf \
encrypt_128bit allow CopyContents Printing \
owner_pw ownpass

Simple file encryption or decryption

The previous examples were in the context of the Splitting and Merging PDF Documents section. Here are examples of how to simply add or unencrypt an individual file:

Encrypting a Single File

pdftk A=input.pdf output encrypted.pdf \
encrypt_128bit allow CopyContents\
owner_pw foopass

Decryption of a single file

pdftk A=encrypted.pdf input_pw A=foopass output decrypted.pdf