Making PDF editable is common, but the contrary—making PDF non editable is also needed, sometimes. Whatever the reason is to make a PDF not editable, there are solutions and tools will do the job. In fact, you might already be using one of these tools.

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Setting a Password Is Not the Best Solution!

Yes, adding a password to PDF is the easiest way to make a PDF non-editable, but this often brings trouble as well.

Once protected your PDF with a password that prevents editing, the entire file cannot be opened, nor viewed anymore, unless the password is shared. And in most cases, we do not need the whole file to be uneditable, we just want to make some fillable form fields non editable, while others still can be edited.

Therefore, to differ from the intentions or solutions that making PDF non-editable by sheerly setting a password, we here list 4 different ways to make PDF uneditable.

Make PDF Non Editable by Removing Editable Fields

This would be the most cases: to make an editable PDF, particularly an editable PDF form to non editable, so no one will be able to fill in the file and change it.

If it is the case for you, you should use Adobe Acrobat, the wonderfully reliable PDF software to work over PDF files, you can use it to create and edit, prepare and fill form, scan and ocr, export and share, review and sign, protect and optimize, etc. It is smart too, it will recognize all editable fields from your PDF, then allows you to remove them all and return you a non editable PDF.

How to make PDF non editable in Adobe Acrobat?

  1. Grab a 7-day free trial of Adobe Acrobat, install and fire up the app on your machine.
  2. Open the file in Adobe Acrobat.make pdf non editable adobe 1
  3. Head to All tools> View more> Prepare a form, select the file and Start.make pdf non editable adobe 2
  4. Hit Create form.make pdf non editable adobe 3
  5. All the fillable fields will be displayed on the right side, you can select them all and right click Delete to remove them all.make pdf non editable adobe 4
  6. Once all the editable fields from all pages are removed, preview the result. Hit Save button.make pdf non editable adobe 5

Also, you can read this article to find more solutions of removing fillable fields from a PDF.

Make PDF Non Editable by Flattening PDF

Adobe Acrobat has another solution for making your PDF not editable, by flattening it, while keeping the comments, markup ,stamp and others in the flattened file.

(For users who don’t use Adobe Acrobat, you can flatten editable PDFs with Print feature in a PDF reader or web browser. For example, head to Mac Preview> Print as PDF, or head to Microsoft Edge> Print as PDF).

How to make PDF non editable by flattening?

  1. Install and fire up Adobe Acrobat.
  2. Head to File> Print. make pdf non editable adobe 3
  3. Select printer as Adobe PDF, in the Comments & Forms menu, choose Document. Hit Print. make pdf non editable adobe 4

Also, you can read this article to find more solutions of flattening a PDF..

Make PDF Non Editable by Saving as Image Format

We all like to get our problems solved with super easy way, and making PDF non editable would be no exception. Technically, you can Google “convert PDF to Image” and get a handful of web platforms that changes the format. Yes, this is totally feasible and worth a try, like pdftoimage.

Pdftoimage is built to turn PDFs to image format, perfect if you need bulk convert files.

How to make PDF non editable by saving as image format?

  1. Navigate to pdftoimage.com. Choose PDF to JPG, or PDF to PNG as you need.
  2. Upload PDF.
  3. Click Download.make pdf non editable

But many web converters require you to upload the file to its website and then download it again, if this is inefficient to you or you cannot take the risks of uploading an important PDF file, converting your PDF to image just in your Mac Preview or Windows Photos app, or using desktop image converters like BatchPhoto or Pixillion.

Make PDF Uneditable by Making It Read-only

Or we just need to make the document Read-only to stop others from editing it.

Every operating system has built-in method of making files read-only, we will explain how as follows:

Mac users

  1. Select the file and right click Get Info.
  2. Head to Sharing & Permissions tab, change the privilege to Read only.read only

Windows users

  1. Right click the file and choose Properties.
  2. Select Read-only, and hit OK.

Summary

In our opinion, solutions to make a PDF non editable can fall into these 4 main categories: by removing fillable fields, by flattening a PDF, by saving as Image, or making it read-only. Each categories might contain multiple different solutions by using different tools, therefore, make a PDF uneditable can be much easier than you think. If you want the greatest control over how to make your PDF non editable, advanced PDF editors like Adobe Acrobat solves your problem, but if you are OK with “locking” your entire PDF from editing, then adding a password or saving as image, is the easy way to go.