You are just about to print a PDF document which is urgently in need of. Then, you find the PDF file is password protected, there is no option to print it.
If you have password, you can enter the password and print it, but if you forgot the password, printing the secured PDF can be a confusing process.
This guide will elaborate on how to print a secured PDF without password in 8 different ways, each of which will help you a lot.
Cisdem PDF Password Remover
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later 
Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7
There are mainly two types of PDF password, a PDF may comes with both passwords or with each one kind of the password.
This password will restrict your access to opening the PDF files. That is, you are not able to open the PDF and view its contents.
This password will restrict how you can utilize the PDF file.The owner can set restrictions on printing, editing, copying, etc. That is, you can open and view the PDF, but if you try to copy content, print and edit the PDF file, you will failed to do so.
From the above we can easily know that, the reasons we can't print a PDF is that the PDF is protected with permission password and restricts access to print.
The short answer is yes. And it is very easy.
You just need to enter the correct password for printing. So, if you know the password, you can easily print the secured PDF with any free PDF reader, like Preview, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Foxit, etc.
But what if we don't have the password? In this case, we need to remove the print restriction from the secured PDF file in order to print it.
Rest assured that it is easy to print a secured PDF and many free solutions are available. Here we will show you each solution with detailed steps and screenshots.
If you don’t know or forgot the PDF password, or if there is an unknown user password preventing you from opening the PDF file, you can use Cisdem PDF Password Remover, to remove restrictions on any secured PDF document.
Cisdem PDF Password Remover can remove both open password and permission password from PDF in a breeze. It supports batch processing and can remove PDF password without knowing the password.
Free Download macOS 10.13 or later Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 
(Optional) If there is a lock icon appearing with your PDF, it indicates your PDF is user password protected from opening and you should remove it. Click the red lock icon on the right, either enter the user password if you know or directly decrypt the password if you forgot it. Remember to tweak the settings as it guides to cut the time for decryption.
Print secured PDF file.
If you only have 1 or 2 secured PDF to be printed and your PDFs are not containing any private or sensitive content. You can also use online sites to remove the PDF printing securities.
Depending on the PDF password type, there are 3 different online ways to print a secured PDF.
| Google Drive | Smallpdf | Lostmypass | |
|---|---|---|---|
| User Password | Require PW | Require PW | Recover a weak PW |
| Owner Password | √ | Unlock simple PW | Unlock simple PW |
| Disadvantage | Distorted formatting and missing images in printed PDFs; crash frequently | Download limited PDFs per day | Max file size: 100 MB |
If you have stored your files in Google Drive or have a Google account, you can print the secured PDF with Google services as well.
It won’t ask you to enter the print password, you just need to open the file with Google Docs and hit the print icon. Even if you want to edit the PDF file before printing, it is possible and simple.
Disadvantage:
Google Docs will convert the protected PDF into Word. In this process, they may change the original layout and formatting, and the images contained in PDF will sometimes fail to load. Still, when testing, we found that the imported PDF files were not always successfully opened with Google Docs. It was crashing.
There are many online PDF password removers that can remove the password from PDF file and create a new non-protected PDF.
Smallpdf is one among them. However, Smallpdf can only unlock a PDF that is protected with permission password, to decrypt PDF for opening, you have to enter the correct password.
Disadvantage:
Smallpdf provides only basic functionality for free and there is no batch unlocking support. Besides, it has limits on file numbers per day. Most importantly, it can only remove short and simple passwords containing only numbers. If your password is made up of characters and numbers, this unlock tool will fail to remove it and prompt you to enter the password.
Lostmypass is an online site that helps remove owner password and recover user password. If your PDF is secured with an owner password, the site will unlock and remove it quickly. Or if your PDF is protected from opening, it will show you the recovered password after cracking, you can use this password to unlock the file for printing.
The recovery process may succeed or fail basing on the strength of original password, and it will take a long time.
Disadvantage:
In the recovery process, it may show your password is weak but still fail to decrypt and guide you to buy its strong password recovery. In addition, you can upload a PDF file with max 100MB for free unlocking.
Apart from utilizing PDF password removers to remove print restriction from PDF files, converting a secured PDF into a Word is also a workable way. Better than other methods, you can modify the content and make adjustments before printing the converted Word file.
As its name suggests, Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a dedicated PDF converter that helps users perform conversions between PDF and various other file formats. It supports importing all types of PDF files, including normal PDF, scanned PDF and protected PDF. To boost your work efficiency, bulk conversion is allowed in this program.
Disadvantage:
This converter will auto delete the permission password applied to the PDF file, but it requires you to type the correct password if an open password is set.
We all know that Microsoft Word is a Word processor developed by Microsoft. It has gone through many versions since 1980, until the 2013 version and later, MS Word has added a new feature that can open a PDF document in the program directly by turning it into Word document.
Disadvantage:
MS Word can convert a protected PDF to Word only if the PDF is restricted to printing, not editing or opening. Additionally, the PDF containing lots of graphics can cause formatting loss after conversion. And if a PDF file exceeds the maximal page size supported by Word, the program will have trouble opening it.
You can remove print restrictions with the print option in a browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Edge.
There are many tutorials online telling your the detailed steps, all the methods ask you to utilize the print option of the web browser, but in our real test, we failed to remove the password in Chrome and Edge for PDFs with permission passwords against file printing. But we did succeed in doing so with Firefox.
It seems a good option to print a secured PDF by taking screenshots of the content. This method works efficiently as long as you can open and view the protected PDF file.
One thing to note is that, it requires capturing the PDF content as an image, which will degrades the quality.
1. In Mac, you can press and hold Shift, Command, and 4 together, then it will show a crosshair, just drag it to select the area of the screen to capture.
2. In Windows, you can tap the Windows key + Shift + S, then your screen will flash and a small Snipping Tool menu will appear at the top of the screen, you can then draw box the define which area you want to capture.
If you have unlocked the PDF for printing, but the secured PDF still won’t print, there might be 3 types of reasons leading to this:
Hardware issues: Malfunction of your device or printer
Fix: Restart the device, replug the printer or print on another device
Software errors: Outdated printing driver or operating system, set up the printer improperly
Fix: Update the software to the latest version, and leave the defaulted settings unchanged
PDF problems: Damaged or corrupted PDFs
Fix: Repair PDF online or use a dedicated PDF recovery program
You can refer to this article and follow the guide to figure out why secured PDF won’t print: reasons why can't print PDF.
Although aforementioned methods all make it possible to print a protected PDF, for the reason of information safety and work efficiency, a desktop PDF Password Remover will be a better choice to print your secured PDFs, it even helps you print a user-password protected PDF without password.
Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
Carolyn has always been passionate about reading and writing, so she joined Cisdem as an editor as soon as she graduated from university. She focuses on writing how-to articles about PDF editing and conversion.
David B. Garner
Thank you for your sharing! I printed my PDF successfully, without entering any password!
Judy
That is the reason why i cannot print the PDF! I followed your guide and it did worked, I got a new unsecured PDF, but everything of the PDF looks as the same as the original.