Using security envelopes in Acrobat

One very cool Adobe® Acrobat® 8 Professional feature is the ability to “wrap” your document and attach files—PDF or otherwise—in a secure envelope for distributing to others. Security Envelopes even look like envelopes!

Simply embed the attachments in a Security Envelope, encrypt the Security Envelope using a password or certificate security method, and then e-mail it. Only the person with rights to open the Security Envelope can see the contents.

Requirements

To complete this article, you will need the following software:

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

• Try
• Buy (Professional)

Prerequisite knowledge:

None

Using security envelopes

Encryption using a Security Envelope doesn’t modify the file attachments in any way; once your recipients extract the file attachments and save them, the files are no longer encrypted. You apply a Security Envelope by doing the following:

1. Choose Advanced > Security > Create Security Envelope, or choose the command from the Secure task pop-up menu.
2. Work through the steps in the wizard:
   • Select documents to attach.
   • Choose a template. Figure 1 shows examples of each of the three available templates.

      

     

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     Figure 1: Choose from one of three provided templates to use for the Security Envelope, or create your own.

   • Choose either to complete the process manually or complete the Security Envelope and e-mail it. The default is to mail it later, which is necessary when the template contains fields you have to complete.
   • Attach a security policy (Click Show All Policies on this frame of the wizard to display your list).
   • Click Finished to close the dialog.
3. Enter your recipient’s email address in the email dialog that opens, and click Send to send it on its way. If you chose to complete the Security Envelope manually, when you have worked through the wizard’s panel and clicked Finished it opens in Acrobat. The files you included in the wizard are listed as attachments to the Security Envelope PDF (Figure 2).

    

   

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   Figure 2: The files included with the Security Envelope are listed in the Attachments panel.

   Once your recipient receives the e-mail, the Security Envelope is shown as an attachment. The recipient can’t open the attachment without the proper permissions, such as entering the password used to encrypt the Security Envelope.

Serving your correspondence

If you are working with the Adobe Policy Server, you can apply the Security Envelope process directly through Outlook. Open an e-mail message window, and click Attach as Secured PDF on the Standard toolbar. In the Attach as Secured PDF dialog, choose the file you want to send, and then select a security option. You can either restrict opening to the names listed in the To and CC fields of the e-mail, or select a policy and click OK. The document attachment to the e-mail displays as usual, but (Secure) appears in the attachment’s name.

Make it personal

You can create other templates to use for the Security Envelope. Create and save a document as a PDF. Then store it in this location: Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat\DocTemplates\ENU. The next time you want to create a Security Envelope, your custom template is included in the list; select it as you work through the wizard.

Where to go from here

For more information about security features in Acrobat 8, check out these other great tutorials:

• Adding a signature field to a PDF file, by Donna Baker
• Using security levels and passwords in Acrobat, by Donna Baker
• Redacting text and images in a PDF file, by Donna Baker

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