A feature of the OpenOffice Writer word processing application is the ability to easily export a document as a PDF. This is built-in to the software.

There may be times you will want to set security permission on the exported PDF to prevent printing or modification of the document itself (such as when sending contract agreements to clients where the document absolutely must not be modified in any way).

OpenOffice makes this easy to do by performing the following steps:

Click File then Export as PDF.

NOTE: Clicking the PDF button in the top button bar will only export "simple" PDF documents with no options. You must click File then Export as PDF to get the options you want.

In the PDF Options dialog box, click the Security tab.

Looks like this:

From here you can set all the options you require. More often than not the only ones you will be interested in are Not Permitted either under "Printing" or "Changes".

Once these options are set, click the Export button at the bottom. You will be prompted to save the PDF file. Save it, and you’re done.