Adobe Acrobat: Prevent Unauthorized Changes to Your PDFs

Unless you have protected your PDFs against changes, anyone with Adobe Acrobat can open your PDF and either make changes or copy your valuable content.

To prevent users from making changes to the PDF, you can save the PDF with an appropriate level of file security.

Before learning how to turn on Acrobat’s security features, perhaps you’d like to learn how to make an editorial change to a PDF using Acrobat? Good, read on.

1. Start Adobe Acrobat 7 and then open a PDF
2. Choose Tools > Advanced Editing > Touchup Text Tool

   The Advanced Editing tools are used to make changes to the PDF file such as creating buttons and form fields, inserting movie clips, and making minor corrections to the text.

3. Using the Touchup Text Tool, select any word in the PDF and replace it with another word
4. Select the Hand Tool on the Basic toolbar and click in the document

   The word you selected has been replaced.

Set Adobe Acrobat File Security

1. Choose File > Document properties
2. Select the Security tab

   

3. Choose Password Security from the Security Method drop-down list
4. Select Restrict printing and editing of the document and its security settings from the Permissions area
5. Type a password into the Permissions Password field
6. Select High Resolution from the Printing Allowed list
7. For Changes Allowed, select Commenting, filling in form fields, and signing existing signature fields
8. Click OK
9. Click OK to the message about third-party software
10. Retype the password when prompted and click OK
11. Click OK to the message about when the changes will go into effect
12. Click OK to close the Document Properties Security dialog box

    The PDF with the new security settings is open in Acrobat. The new settings will not take effect until the PDF is saved and closed.

13. Save and close the PDF
14. Reopen the PDF (you can select the file from the recently used list in the File menu)
15. Test file security of the PDF for review by choosing Tools > Advanced Editing. Try to select the TouchUp Text Tool

    While you can select the tool, you will be unable to use it to make any changes to the PDF.

Want to learn more about editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7? Click here.