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Question

Word Mail Merge to Adobe PDF attach as email

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
April 15, 2020
3 replies
12128 views

I can do a mail merge and send emails with a PDF attachment. I need the PDF to be password protected.

I tried going to the Acrobat tab>Crate Adobe PDF group>Preferences, then clicked on the security tab. I password protected. However, when I send the email with attachment, the file is not password protected. I can still edit it.

Please help

Create PDFs

james.goodman

Participating Frequently

You might want to consider using mailmergic.com for this workflow. It can generate individual PDFs from a Word mail merge and apply a unique password to each PDF automatically, without any VBA or complex coding.

This way, you don’t have to manually set passwords in Acrobat after the merge — everything is done in one step, and each recipient gets their own secured file. It’s much faster and more reliable than trying to toggle settings between Word and Acrobat.

try67

Community Expert

If you're interested, I've developed my own (paid-for) Mail Merge script for Acrobat, with some advanced features, including the option to automatically apply a security policy to the merged files, as well as automatically email them to the recipients, specify a file-name pattern, etc. You can find it here: http://try67.blogspot.com/2011/09/acrobat-mail-merge-and-email.html

H

hopeful_person0D45Author

Participant

Thank you. I'll check it out!

ls_rbls

Community Expert

Hey Heather,

When you say that you password protected the PDF, are you taking into account that there are two password protections involved?

With the document opened , when you tick the checkbox to require a password to open the document, ensure that you also set a password for the Permissions.

You can leave printing allowed, but the next dropdown menu below, verify which options do you need.

If you require the document to be completely read-only, select NONE from the Changes Allowed dropdown menu.

When you're done, type in a Change Permission password. This password must be different than the password you selected to open the document..

In addition, below this sections, you also have Options to select compatibility encryption levels for all document content or just the attachments.

Just remember, these settings won't be applied until you save the document. So, click Ok, and click OK again, then save the document.

ls_rbls

Community Expert

Also, I forgot to ask how are you doing the mail merge?

ls_rbls

Community Expert

I appreciate your response.

I am using Word. I have a document that is a certificate. I am using the mail merge feature to create about 26 certificates for me.

I am wanting to use the Merge to PDF option that will send each individual student an email with their attached certificate in a PDF format.

The only problem is that the PDF sent to the student is not password protected.

I tried setting a password in the preferences within Word, but the files sent out are still not password protected.

I attched two images

I think this Microsoft and Adobe integration is not working. I am almost positive this could be a bug or very hidden setting.

I recreated many scenarios and toggled on and off many preferences in both Acrobat and Word with no success.

The mail merge action in both, MS word and the Acrobat application, doesn't allow much room for flexibility.

The only thing that work for me was to do the mail merge in word first. Then in Acrobat create an action to assign password protection using the action wizard.

Then go back to Ms Word, and use Create PDF and run an action, then select the action I created.

The only problem is that this only converts the entire mailmerge document into one single PDF. It enforce the security but not the mail merge.

I will keep looking.

See if in thr Mocrosft support forums someone can also share feedback.

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