Sharing PDFs is a common practice these days. Here, distributing secret information without security or editing restrictions can be hazardous. It can cause serious issues like data loss, modification, and more. These malicious activities can impact on trustworthiness and reliability. Now, you might be seeking how to protect a PDF document from being edited, ensuring the protection of data from lurking threats. In this way, you can keep your PDF content secure or unchanged. So, let’s dive to learn the best techniques to make PDF read only document. 

What is PDF Editing Restriction?

The feature of PDF editing restriction is mainly utilized to stop unwanted modifications in PDF documents. It mainly limits the various actions like text editing, copying, deleting, adding comments, and annotations. Moreover, this type of protection is used to ensure the secure distribution of documents such as financial reports, legal contracts, business secrets, and more.

Additionally, it helps to stop unauthorized users from performing malicious and unlawful activities like data compromise or breach. Besides the edit restrictions, there are other various types of protections applied to the PDF document, read them below:

  • User Password Security: These documents are secured by strong passwords, preventing direct access to the privileged PDFs. It allows you to share the PDF with legitimate users. This protection is mainly used on highly confidential documents. 

  • Owner Password Security: Unlike user passwords, controlling specific actions on the PDF document is mainly known as owner security or restrictions. This restricts PDFs from being edited, copied, printed, and more. 

Overall, PDF editing protection secures the document from accidental edits or modifications. Now, let’s move to understanding the common benefit for using protecting the PDF being edited. 

What is the Purpose of Protecting the PDF from Being Edited?

Protecting the sensitive document from editing leverage users to share the information securely. Moreover, it certainly safeguards the PDF from unwanted changes or content tampering. Here are the major benefits of using PDF editing protection:

  • Stop Unauthorized Alterations: Securing the document from being edited helps to control the modification of the official documents. In this way, you can share the data while protecting the content. 

  • Improves Document Security: Distributing the document without restriction unlocks the chances of data manipulation. Moreover, it is essential to protect the document from threat actors and frauds. 

  • Comply With Data Security: Many industries need to secure data under data privacy or security standards. Here, imposing the editing restriction plays a crucial role in safeguarding the document while adhering to legal guidelines. 

In short, protecting PDF documents from being edited is essential. It allows users to share the document safely, ensuring the file integrity. Now, let’s move on to learn the techniques for how to protect a PDF file from being edited. 

#1 How to Protect a PDF Document from Being Edited Using Online Tools 

Previously, we have discussed the benefits of securing the PDF from editing. In the following section, we will share how to protect PDFs from unwanted edits. Try online PDF protecting tools like Smallpdf, one of the ultimate choices for protecting the data. This freeware software offers a simple user-centric interface, allowing you to lock your document without any data loss. 

Here is the stepwise guide for how to protect a PDF document from being edited using online tools:

  1. To protect the PDF from editing, open the Smallpdf PDF Converter. 

  2. Go to “Convert to” and pick the Image > Convert option > Download. 

It might be the simplest and fastest way to protect the document from being edited. On the other hand, there are various challenges or limitations that you might address while using these online services. Now, let’s understand them briefly. 

Limitations: Online PDF tools aren’t secure as these services are capable of breaching security standards. Moreover, this software can make copies of your secret document leading to data compromise or loss. Besides this, it just converts the content into images instead of protecting the PDF from editing. Additionally, this software can hurt the document integrity. 

#2 How to Protect a PDF File from Being Edited With Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is another way to protect the PDF from being edited. Unlike online services, this is a secure and highly advanced software to safeguard PDFs from unauthorized editing and modifications. Using this robust tool, you can customize the PDF security, allowing you to impose different restrictions like passwords and editing, text copying, or more. Here are steps to follow for how to protect a PDF document from being edited using Adobe Acrobat tool:

  1. Download or run the Acrobat tool on your computer. 

  2. Move to “Tools” > “Protect” option > set the protection. 

  3. Now, choose the necessary security > enable edit restriction. 

  4. Lastly, use the OK and Save buttons to download the edit protected document. 

It is one of the go-to methods to protect the PDF document from being edited. Despite its benefits, there are a few limitations which can cause inconvenience. So, let’s understand the drawbacks before opting for this software.

Please Note:  Adobe Acrobat is a highly premium and costly software. It has different plans starting at $24. Moreover, the subscription plans are equally expensive for business users or individual professionals. On the other hand, the issue of Adobe Acrobat tool not responding often stops you from protecting the document from editing. 

#3 How to Protect a PDF File from Being Edited - SysTools PDF Locking 

Many of you often search for “how do you prevent a PDF from being edited”, use the SysTools PDF Lock Tool, one of the advanced and all-in-one software for managing PDFs with security. This robust tool is designed for Windows OS, allowing you to safeguard the PDF data from being edited in batch mode. 

Moreover, this amazing tool deals with user password and owner security at once. The other prime features of this software include supporting advanced encryption such as 128-AES or 256-AES. Additionally, it allows you to preserve the PDF metadata and properties without any data loss. Now, let’s dive to learn the workings of this software. 

Guide to Protect PDF from Being Edited

  1. Run the SysTools PDF locking tool. 

  2. “Add Files” feature to upload the files. 

  3. “Change” and then, use the “Next” option. 

  4. Under the Apply Document Restrictions > set edit protection. 

  5. Lastly, enable the Lock option to protect the document from editing. 

Final Words 

Securing the PDFs becomes necessary to stop malicious activities. In this guide, we have shared 3 ways for how to protect a PDF document from being edited. Using these techniques, you can impose edit restrictions to keep your data away from unwanted alterations. Compared to other methods, we suggest you consider the SysTools solution, it more reliable and fast way to protect the PDF document. Also, you can try the demo version to explore the feature-rich functions of this advanced software with ease.