How to Save a Word Document as a PDF with a Password
Summary :
When your save a protected Microsoft Word document as PDF, you will lose the protection. On this page, you’ll find out the most practical methods to save Word as PDF with a password.
Table of Contents
Save a Word Document as a PDF with a Password
Protecting sensitive information in Microsoft Word documents using passwords is easy, but when it comes to saving Microsoft Word documents as PDFs with passwords, things can get tricky.
On this page, we’ll talk about a practical method to save Word documents as PDFs with passwords. Step-by-step tutorials are provided so you can easily follow them.
Saving Protected Word to PDF Removes Security
While the Microsoft Word program provides an inbuilt functionality for you to encrypt Microsoft Word documents with passwords, a quite inconvenient fact is that if you choose to save the encrypted Word document to any document format other than Microsoft Word, say PDF, that will result in the loss of the password protection.
In that case, anyone can open, view and edit the seemingly encrypted PDF without getting asked for your password.
Save Word with Security Loss
Save a Word as a Protected PDF in Microsoft Word
As mentioned, if you choose to save Word as PDF, the security will be removed. The case is similar when you convert PDF to Word in Microsoft Word.
However, does that mean you can’t create a password-protected PDF in Microsoft Word? Not exactly.
Now see the tutorial below to know how you can do so.
Step 1. Open the Microsoft Word document you need to save as a protected PDF.
Step 2. Click on the File tab and go to the lower Export section. Go to Create PDF/XPS Document, and then hit the Create PDF/XPS button.
Create PDF or XPS in Word
Step 3. In the Publish as PDF or XPS window, give your protected PDF a preferred name and click on Options.
Click Options in Publish Window
Step 4. In the Options menu, check the Encrypt the document with a password option, and click OK.
Encrypt Document with Password
Step 5. Type in your preferred password to set and confirm the password for your published PDF, and click OK.
Set Password to Published PDF
Step 6. Lastly, click Publish to export the PDF. And then I opened the PDF in Microsoft Edge, you can see that it’s been successfully encrypted.
Protected PDF Exported from Word
Save a Word as a Protected PDF in PDFgear
As you may have noticed, it’s quite a complicated task to save Word as PDF with a password in Microsoft Word, so that is why I’m introducing a more convenient workaround: PDFgear.
PDFgear Desktop is a piece of all-in-one PDF editor software on Windows and Mac. It’s completely free to use, and it gathers a complete set of features in one place, including PDF conversions, PDF encryptions, PDF text editing, PDF annotations, PDF signatures, etc.
With PDFgear, you can easily convert Word to PDF and apply a user password to PDF in a more intuitive way. Additionally, if you forget the password, PDFgear even helps to unlock PDFs without passwords.
100% Clean & Safe
Step 1. Download and install PDFgear on your computer, and open it.
Step 2. Click on Word to PDF from Hot Tools.
PDF to Word Converter in PDFgear
Step 3. Import one or more Microsoft Word documents, and hit Convert to start the conversion.
Import Word to PDFgear
Step 4. Once the conversion is done, you’ll be led to the output file folder.
Step 5. Head back to PDFgear main workplace, click Open File, then import the converted PDF.
Step 6. From the PDF editor screen, go to the Tools section and click Password.
Password Protect PDF in PDFgear
Step 7. Type in and confirm your password and click OK.
Step 8. Lastly, click the upper-right Save button to save the PDF with security. That’s it! Now you have a protected PDF turned from your Word document!
Bonus: Save Word as Word with Password
If you only need to apply encryptions to Word, there’s no need to save the document in PDF format. Instead, you can go with a Microsoft Word document with a password.
Click on the File menu, go to the Info section, click on the Protect Document button, and select Encrypt with Password from the dropdown.
Protect Document in Word
Type in the preferred password and hit OK, and then confirm the password in the following window. Just note that the password is case-sensitive.
Enter Password for Word
If you’ve done it correctly, you’ll see the message saying “A password is required to open this document”.
Encrypted Word Document
How Safe is Microsoft Word Encryption?
Microsoft has a strong track record of implementing encryption technologies to protect user data, the level of security of Microsoft Word passwords depends on the strength of the password chosen by the user. It’s important to choose a strong password that consists of a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols, and is not easily guessable or commonly used.
Passwords can still be hacked or bypassed by experienced attackers using specialized tools or social engineering techniques. As such, it’s important to combine password protection with other security measures to keep documents safe.
Conclusion
So that will be all about saving and exporting a Microsoft Word document as PDF with a password. The two different methods are all free to use, so you only need to choose one according to your specific using scenario. For me personally, the PDFgear is undoubtedly easier to use and more user-friendly. So make sure to give it a whirl!
