Sending secure PDFs with Confidencial
Last updated
Last updated
ℹ️ Let’s say you’re George Jetson and you work at Example Company. You just finished a proposal and want to send the final product to your two subcontractors, Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs. However, there’s a problem - you can’t let them see what the other is doing in your proposal (they’re both very secretive about the work they do and the prices they charge).
In the old days, you’d have to create a separate PDF file for each subcontractor and redact the information they aren’t allowed to see. In this example, that’d mean creating three different versions of your proposal and sending a separate email for each person to get their copy. Make sure you send the right copy to the right person!
Fortunately, you don’t have to do this anymore. With Confidencial, you can do all this with a single PDF file and a single message. You don’t have multiple, unprotected copies of your proposal floating around and you don’t have to worry about getting multiple emails set up with the right attachment and sent off to the right people. Let’s see the modern way to securely share a PDF file…
Open the Confidencial or go to and if you haven’t done so already
Click PDF Protector
Click Open PDF File
Select your PDF file (our proposal in this example)
You can now see your proposal (PDF) in Confidencial’s PDF Protector
Select a part of the proposal that you only want Cosmo Spacely to be able to see
in the right taskpane. You can do so by entering his email address, or, if you’ve sent to him before, click in the input box to show a list of your recent recipients.
You and Cosmo are now in the recipients list
To encrypt the content you selected for Cosmo, click the “gear” button and choose Encrypt Selection from the menu, then click the blue Encrypt Selection button.
The selected content is now protected. Only you and Cosmo will be able to view it.
Repeat Steps 6-9 for the other parts of the proposal that you want to protect
💡 Pro tip: You can remove someone from your recipients list by clicking the X next to their name.
With all parts protected, click the download button in the toolbar to save your PDF
💡 Pro tip: When you download (save) the PDF file, you can overwrite the original version of the PDF. Doing so will replace the original, unprotected PDF with a protected, Confidencial PDF.
Now that you’ve saved your Confidencial PDF file, send it to Cosmo and Mr. Cogswell (we use Slack in this example). Remember, since access control is built directly into this PDF, you send the same version to everyone. No more sending multiple versions to multiple people with multiple messages!
✅ Your subcontractors are now ready to view the proposal.
