PDF tools · passwords
Put a password on a finished PDF before you send it: the file will ask for the password before it opens, anywhere. The lock is the strongest current kind (AES-256), the work runs in your browser, and the password itself never leaves this page.
For a finished PDF you are about to send somewhere it should not be readable by everyone who touches it.
Pick the PDF
Type a password twice
Protect and download
Drop a PDF on the tray, or click to pick one
PDF · it stays on this device
Read this before you run: choose a password you will remember, and keep it somewhere safe. There is no recovery, by design. If you forget it, the file stays shut, here and everywhere, and nobody can open it for you. That is what a real password means.
Pick a PDF to begin.
The page opens your PDF, locks it with the password you typed using the PDF engine's own standard protection (AES-256, revision 6), and then checks the finished file the way a reader will meet it: it must refuse to open without the password and open with it, with every page present. Only then is the download offered. Your unprotected original is never changed.
A password is only as strong as the password: a short or guessed one can be tried against the file by someone patient, because the file itself is the lock. Eight or more characters, not used anywhere else, is a good floor. This tool sets one password for the whole file; it does not set the separate print/copy permission switches, and a file that already has a password must be unlocked first. Very old readers may not open AES-256 files at all.
The strongest current kind: AES-256, revision 6, the same protection Acrobat writes. The finished file asks for the password before it opens, in any modern reader. Very old readers (from before this kind existed) may not be able to open it at all.
No. Not here, not anywhere. That is not a missing feature; it is what a real password means. This page cannot help, no other tool can help, and any page that promises to open a password-locked file without the password is describing something else. Choose a password you will remember, and keep it somewhere safe.
Nowhere. It is typed into this page and used inside this page, in your browser, and it is gone when the page closes. Watch the network panel while it works if you want to check: like every job here, nothing is sent anywhere.
Not directly: this page says so when you pick one. Take the old password off first with the unlock tool, then protect the file again here with the new one.
The password stops the file opening at all without it, which covers everything inside. This tool sets one password for the whole file; it does not offer the separate print/copy permission switches some programs set. If the file opens, it can be read in full.