In this video, I’ll show you how to Password Protect a PDF File for Free Without Adobe Acrobat Pro DC using LibreOffice Draw.
LibreOffice Draw is a free open-source application in the LibreOffice suite that allows editing of PDF files and for this purpose, add password protection to our PDF file. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Get LibreOffice – https://www.libreoffice.org/
Video Transcript
In this video, I’ll show you how to password protect a PDF file for free without using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.
Welcome to this video.
My name is David and if this is your first time watching my videos, and you get value from the content that you watch, kindly consider liking this video and share it with your friends so that we can all learn together.
So I’ve got a PDF file here.
And if I just open it up, let’s assume I’m going to use something like Adobe Acrobat Reader. And this is the free version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.
It’s not possible to set a password with this using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
But what if you wanted to password protect your PDF file, so that only persons that are authorized or have the password to read that particular PDF file can do it.
It’s easy to do that without using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.
And it’s pretty simple using the suite called LibreOffice. And this is a free, more or less like a word packed or Microsoft kind of suite.
And it has all the things that you need from the PowerPoint version, the PDF version that is LibreDraw, and LibreWriter, etc. That is the word version.
So this is Libre Office, and to download, just come up to this section, and I will not be downloading and then just click on Download Libre Office.
And depending on your system, it’s going to automatically recognize your system.
LibreOffice is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
So if you want to password protect a PDF file on Mac, then you can download these and do it. And the process is the same.
If you want to pass or protect a PDF file on Linux, the process is the same.
So I’ve already downloaded and installed LibreOffice.
So I’m going to show you from my installation.
Now let’s just minimize that.
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This is our PDF file and opening it there was no password requirement that was required.
So let’s just close it out.
And then since I’ve already installed LibreOffice, I’ll just click on Libre on the search.
And there are a couple of options that will come up LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Draw LibreOffice Calc, all these applications.
But what we need to work with inside so that we can open our PDF is LibreOffice Draw, I’ll just click on that.
And once it’s open, what we are going to do, we’re going to open up our PDF file.
So that is the interface of LibreOffice Draw.
And all we’re going to do is just come to File, Open.
And then we’ll navigate to the folder with the PDF file that we want to password protect.
Just click on that, and then click on open.
And once you open our PDF file, it’s going to populate on this particular interface or canvas, it looks good.
Let’s assume there are no changes.
But if you wanted to make any changes, it’s pretty possible to do that inside here, you can actually just double click on that, and even change the title, “tips to”… whatever and then just click out and it changes that inside there.
But you can just press on Ctrl Z to reverse our changes, and then go to what we came to do here.
Let’s password protect our PDF file for free using LibreOffice Draw.
Let’s come up to file and then go to Export as – Export as PDF.
And once you in this section, I’ll not touch anything inside here because all we need to do is just secure our password, our PDF.
So just come up to security.
So there’s initial view, user interface, links, security, and then digital signatures.
And once you inside security, there is the option for file encryption and permissions.
And all we need to do is just click on Set Password.
And the password we want is to set the password when you want to open the PDF file.
If you want to set a password for permissions, then this is something that you can include here, maybe permission to print, permission to edit, etc.
So that if anybody wants to do that, then they need a password.
Let’s say we just want to set up a password when the PDF file is opened.
Let’s just add a password a simple 12345 and then click on Confirm 12345 and then click on OK. And then click on Export.
And then just rename it “password protected.” And then just click on Save.
And once we click on save, navigate back to our folder, you will notice that this this new PDF file “password protected.”
If I right click on it open with – Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and this is the free version.
And once we open, it’s going to tell us to actually enter our password.
So let’s enter our password and the password goes something like 12345.
Now, what if we just get up to four and let’s just hit backspace so that we can intentionally input the wrong password.
Click OK.
“The password is incorrect. Please make sure that Caps Lock is not on by mistake and try again.”
Click OK. 12345.Click OK.
And since now we’ve input the correct password our PDF is now open.
So that is how you password protect a PDF file for free without using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. That is using LibreOffice Draw.
This is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
I hope this tutorial has been of value to you if you’re intending to password protect your PDF file.
Thank you for watching.
My name is David. Until next time, stay safe and never stop learning.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.