No license to buy when your document is more than a single page, no hidden toolbars installed, no ads popping up. Unlike the apps you can find in the Microsoft Store this really is free as in, well, free. More interesting, go to the next step and you’ll see that it’s all the typical open source licensing terms: NET but you probably already have it on your PC so it’s not a worry. Jump over to and you will see the option to download the executable or the source code. Enter PDF Encrypt… PASSWORD PROTECT PDF FILES WITH PDF ENCRYPT So are you stuck and doomed to pay the fee and get Adobe Acrobat Pro DC for your Windows PC? Nope. No surprise, if you choose “Password Protect” from the “File” menu it doesn’t prompt for the document password, it shows this instead: Notice the “Free 7-Day Trial” button on the lower right, however. I can open up the PDF file in Acrobat Reader DC even if I haven’t licensed the program because the free version lets you read and do basic tasks with a PDF like fill in fields on a form… Right click on a PDF file and your options to open it are probably similar to mine: But let’s see what’s going on if I just rely on the built-in tools in Windows. NET, or just grab an executable ready to run. PDF Encrypt is no different, and from the home page you can download the actual source code to the program if you want to read a few thousand lines of C# for. One of the great things about the open source community is that it’s standard for developers to make the source code available, not just offer up an executable that could be doing who knows what on your PC. PASSWORD PROTECT PDF DOCUMENTS ON A WINDOWS PC

Let’s have a look at one of these, PDF Encrypt.

Fortunately there are some really great open source options if you’re willing to step away from the Microsoft app store and try something different. Worse, if you open up the Microsoft Store and look for PDF tools, they aren’t much cheaper and you never really know if they might be saving a copy of every document you protect. This seems like a pretty high fee to pay for something as simple as adding a password to a single PDF document. There are some workarounds like LibreOffice has some ability to work with passwords but really you’re on your own unless you pay $120 annually for an Adobe Acrobat Reader Pro license. On the PC side for reasons I cannot explain, you actually don’t have that feature built-in. It’s really hard to compare the two platforms in this instance because on the Mac it’s ridiculously easy to work with PDF documents including saving them in encrypted or password-protected format.

Adobe 9 preview on windows 10