What is the difference between the two passwords?

The opening password is asked for when the file is opened, and without it there is nothing to read. The permissions password is what lifts the restrictions — printing, copying, editing — for whoever holds it. A file with only a permissions password opens for anyone and is merely awkward to copy from; a file with an opening password is genuinely closed.

I set only an opening password. Are the restrictions real?

Only against somebody who does not have that password, which is nobody you sent the file to. It is reused as the permissions password, so anyone who can open the document can also lift its restrictions. Set both passwords if those two audiences are not the same people.

Can somebody remove this password later?

Only with a password. Our unlock tool asks for one and refuses without it, and that is the general case rather than our policy: the content is encrypted, so there is nothing to read until the right key is derived from the right password.

Which encryption strength should I choose?

AES-256 unless a specific old reader has to open the file. AES-128 exists here for compatibility with software from before Acrobat 9. Both are AES, and the tool never falls back to the RC4 encryption that made older 128-bit PDFs weak.

Will turning off copying stop people extracting my text?

It stops the copy command in readers that honour the flag. It does not stop a screenshot, a photograph of the screen or a tool that ignores permissions. Treat it as a statement of intent rather than a control.

Can I protect several documents in one go?

Not in one run. This takes a single file on purpose, because one mistyped password applied to twenty documents is twenty documents nobody can open. Merge them first if they belong together.

Password protect a PDF and choose what readers may do

This encrypts the document. There are two passwords and they do different jobs: the one that opens the file is what actually keeps people out, and the one that changes permissions is what lets whoever holds it lift the restrictions you set below. The restrictions on their own are not a security feature — they are flags inside the file that a well-behaved reader honours and a determined one ignores. The encryption is real; the flags are a request.

There is no way back without the password. Nothing here recovers, resets or bypasses one, and if you lose it the document is gone. That is what encryption means.

Password protect a PDF

No account. Your upload is deleted after 2 hours, the result after 24 hours.

Choose file

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How it works

Decide which password you are setting. One to open the document, one to change its permissions, or both — but at least one, or there is nothing for the tool to do. If you are not sure, the opening password is the one you want.
Choose what is still allowed. Printing starts on; copying, editing and commenting start off. Set them to what a reader should genuinely be able to do — they are stored as flags inside the encrypted file, not as separate locks.
Test the result before you send it. Open the download in a reader and check that it asks for the password you expect. Then send the password by some route other than the email carrying the file, because nothing here can recover it for you.

What the options do

The form above lists the options this tool is running today, straight from the server. This is what they are for.

Password to open the document: The one that matters. Without it there is nothing to read: the contents are encrypted and no reader can draw a page. Leave it empty and the file opens for anybody, with only the permission flags standing between them and printing it.
Password to change permissions: The owner password, which lifts the restrictions for whoever holds it. Left empty, we reuse the opening password rather than setting none — an empty owner password lets any reader claim owner rights, which would quietly make every permission below decorative. The consequence is worth following through: if you set only an opening password, everyone you gave it to can also lift the restrictions, and the run notes tell you so.
Allow printing: On by default. Turning it off asks readers not to print, and asks is the operative word: it holds in Acrobat, Preview and the browser viewers, and does not hold in software written without regard for the flag.
Allow copying text and images: Off by default. It stops ordinary select-and-copy in a compliant reader. It does not stop a screenshot, a photograph of the screen or a tool that extracts text without asking. Reading aloud with a screen reader stays allowed whatever this is set to, which is deliberate: an accessibility exception that readers honour is worth more than a copy restriction they do not.
Allow editing the pages: Covers changing the content and adding, deleting or reordering pages. Off by default, and usually the reason people are here — it is what makes a compliant reader refuse to let somebody re-type a figure in your document.
Allow comments and form filling: Off by default. Turn it on when you are sending out a form to be completed or a draft to be annotated. Leaving it off on a form is a common way to send somebody a document they cannot fill in and cannot explain.
Encryption strength: AES-256 is the default and the right answer. Pick AES-128 only when the file has to open in something older than Acrobat 9 — in practice a reader from before 2008 or an appliance nobody has updated. Both are AES; neither is the broken RC4 that older 128-bit PDFs used.

What this tool does not do

There is no way back without the password. Nothing here recovers, resets or bypasses one, and if you lose it the document is gone. That is what encryption means.
Permission flags are honoured, not enforced. Acrobat, Preview and the browser viewers respect them; other software need not. Do not use them for anything that would matter if they were ignored.
Setting only an opening password makes the restrictions unenforceable against the people you sent it to, because that password is reused as the permissions password. Set both when the two audiences differ.
It cannot re-protect a file that is already encrypted. Unlock it first with the password you have, then protect it again with the settings you want.
A digital signature on the document will not verify afterwards, because the file is written out anew.
The password is sent to our server, because the encryption happens there. For a document whose password must never leave your machine, a desktop reader does the same job locally.

What happens to your file

The file is uploaded because Password protect PDF runs on our server rather than in the browser tab. It is kept for at most 2 hours and the result you download for 24 hours, then a scheduled job deletes both — a job has to be able to read the file while it runs, and you have to be able to retry a failed conversion without re-uploading. Neither needs longer.

Nothing about the contents is logged, and no one reads your documents. The retention page lists the same numbers the code enforces, and the privacy policy says who can reach the storage they sit in.

Questions

What is the difference between the two passwords?: The opening password is asked for when the file is opened, and without it there is nothing to read. The permissions password is what lifts the restrictions — printing, copying, editing — for whoever holds it. A file with only a permissions password opens for anyone and is merely awkward to copy from; a file with an opening password is genuinely closed.
I set only an opening password. Are the restrictions real?: Only against somebody who does not have that password, which is nobody you sent the file to. It is reused as the permissions password, so anyone who can open the document can also lift its restrictions. Set both passwords if those two audiences are not the same people.
Can somebody remove this password later?: Only with a password. Our unlock tool asks for one and refuses without it, and that is the general case rather than our policy: the content is encrypted, so there is nothing to read until the right key is derived from the right password.
Which encryption strength should I choose?: AES-256 unless a specific old reader has to open the file. AES-128 exists here for compatibility with software from before Acrobat 9. Both are AES, and the tool never falls back to the RC4 encryption that made older 128-bit PDFs weak.
Will turning off copying stop people extracting my text?: It stops the copy command in readers that honour the flag. It does not stop a screenshot, a photograph of the screen or a tool that ignores permissions. Treat it as a statement of intent rather than a control.
Can I protect several documents in one go?: Not in one run. This takes a single file on purpose, because one mistyped password applied to twenty documents is twenty documents nobody can open. Merge them first if they belong together.

Guides that use this tool

Written for the problem rather than the tool: what is actually going wrong, and what to do about it whether or not you end up here.

Does renaming a PDF change what is inside? — No — unless the tool also writes the new name into the document title. That one difference decides whether a signature still verifies afterwards.
Does flattening a PDF kill its hyperlinks? — The blue underline survives; the click usually does not. Link annotations and field widgets are different objects, and tools treat them differently.
Does renaming a signed PDF break the signature? — The file name sits outside the byte range the certificate covers, so an operating system rename is harmless. Writing that name into metadata is not.
Can you compress a password-protected PDF? — Which of the two kinds you have decides it. An owner restriction lifts off and the file re-saves cleanly; a user one blocks every tool until it is typed.

Unlock PDF — Remove the password from a PDF you can already open, so you stop typing it.
Flatten PDF — Turn form fields — and optionally annotations — into ordinary page content, so the values can be read but no longer edited.
Watermark PDF — Stamp text across the pages — DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, a name — at the size, colour, angle and opacity you choose.
Edit PDF metadata — Change the title, author, subject and keywords a PDF reports — the fields a document management system indexes and a reader shows in Properties.
Remove annotations from PDF — Strip comments, highlights, links or form fields.
To change the words on the page rather than the pages themselves, use the PDF editor.

Put documents together

Take documents apart

Make a file smaller or a scan straighter

Get the contents out of a PDF

Make a PDF out of something else

Fix how the pages sit on the paper

Put something on every page

Control what can be done with the file

Tidy up the document itself