Encrypting a File

PDF encryption requires two passwords: the "user password" to open and view the file with restricted permissions, the "owner password" to access the file with all permission.

Load and Save Encrypted

This small sample shows how to encrypt a file so that it can be viewed, but not printed.

PDDocument doc = PDDocument.load("filename.pdf");

// Define the length of the encryption key.
// Possible values are 40 or 128 (256 will be available in PDFBox 2.0).
int keyLength = 128;

AccessPermission ap = new AccessPermission();

// Disable printing, everything else is allowed
ap.setCanPrint(false);

// Owner password (to open the file with all permissions) is "12345"
// User password (to open the file but with restricted permissions, is empty here) 
StandardProtectionPolicy spp = new StandardProtectionPolicy("12345", "", ap);
spp.setEncryptionKeyLength(keyLength);
spp.setPermissions(ap);
doc.protect(spp);

doc.save("filename-encrypted.pdf");
doc.close();