Share a PDF securely with personal links

With Secure sharing, every recipient gets a personal link to your PDF. To open it, the recipient requests a one-time code, which is sent to their email address. You see who opened the PDF, and you can revoke each link at any time.

Create a secure link

1. In the Workspace, open the project’s ⋯ menu and choose Access & secure sharing.
2. Under Access mode, choose Secure. The section Create secure link appears.
3. Enter the Recipient email.
4. Optional: choose a date and time under Expires, and enter a Watermark text. View preview shows the watermark on the cover.
5. Click Create secure link. If Secure is not saved yet, Viewnamic saves it first.
6. Copy the link with Copy and send it to the recipient yourself, for example by email.

The link is shown only once. After you close the dialog, it cannot be displayed again. If you lose it, revoke it and create a new one.

Repeat the steps for every recipient: each person gets their own link.

What recipients see

1. The recipient opens the link and sees the dialog Protected PDF. It shows their email address partly hidden and, if you set an expiry, until when the link is valid.
2. They click Send verification code and receive an email with a six-digit code. The code is valid for 10 minutes.
3. They enter the code and click Verify code. The PDF opens, with your watermark if you set one.

The code always goes to the address you entered. If someone forwards the link, the other person cannot open the PDF without the code from that mailbox. The confirmation lasts one hour; after that, the recipient requests a new code. Secure publications are never offered for download, and whoever opens the normal link only sees that the PDF is protected.

See who opened the PDF

Under Existing secure links, every recipient has a row with the expiry, the watermark and the creation date. It also shows when a verification code was last requested and when the PDF was opened: the first time, the last time and how often.

In addition, the team member who created the link receives an email when the recipient requests a code and when they open the PDF – or the account owner, if that person no longer has access to the publication. These emails contain only the recipient’s address, the document name and the time.

All of these emails come in German or English: the code in the language of the recipient’s browser, the emails about the link in the language in which the person receiving them last used Viewnamic.

Revoke a link

1. Open Access & secure sharing for the project.
2. Under Existing secure links, click Revoke next to the recipient and confirm.

The link no longer opens the PDF. A recipient who opens it sees that the link is no longer valid and is asked to request a new one from you. The same happens when a link expires.

If you change the access mode from Secure to Link only or Public page, all active secure links of the publication are revoked. Revoked links cannot be restored.

Secure sharing with one-time codes and recipient watermarks are part of the Tailored plan. The fields for expiry and watermark appear only if your plan includes them. Contact us if you need secure sharing.