For several specific reasons, the author of a PDF file might have disabled the permission to print the document. For instance, a brochure about a product that is yet to be released may have its printing permission locked until it got approved.

But if the situation is justified, the unprintable PDF can be printed anyway with a clever trick.

In this guide, I will teach you how to print a secured PDF. We won’t need special hacking tools or premium software to unlock it. Instead, we only need a modern browser, like Chrome, and a Google Drive account.

Follow along!

1. First, go to Google Drive and log in with your account. Then click New > File upload.

2. Select the secured PDF file you want to print.

3. Once the file is uploaded, right-click on it and select Preview.

4. A preview page will appear. Click the print icon on the top right corner.

5. You will be redirected to a new PDF viewer window. Click the print icon on the top right corner.

6. The print window will show up and you can start printing the document.

In this case, Google Drive is essentially bypassing the printing restriction automatically. Therefore, when you preview the document, it will be treated as a regular PDF file.

On the contrary, this is also a lesson why disallowing printing on a PDF file may not be enough. You will need something more secure, like archiving it with a strong password. Anyway, I hope you learned something from this page.