Microsoft
Microsoft
MicrosoftDynamic watermarks are rendered by the client at run-time based on information in the sensitivity label, so PDF support has to be implemented by the app used view the file. The Office team is in discussion with partner teams who own PDF viewing surfaces in the Microsoft ecosystem about the possibility of extending dynamic watermarking support to these surfaces (ex. SharePoint's file viewer), but no work is committed at this point.
Hi Camille.
So happy to have this generally available. Thanks for posting! 😀
I believe that wide-scale adoption of Purview Sensitivity Labels will be hamstrung unless PDFs are treated equally to Office document formats when it comes to both encryption and watermarking (standard and dynamic). They must be handled within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem because the Adobe Acrobat option is complicated, clunky and prohibititvely expensive (with edit option).
🤩 I'm delighted to report that Microsoft Edge very recently started automatically decrypting PDFs encrypted by a Purview Sensitivity label within the SharePoint document viewer (previously you had to click the PDF a second time to open it in Edge which was effecitvely outside of the SharePoint file viewer).
This means now that watermarking is now the only critical missing feature for PDFs in Purview (well, being able to select a Sensitivity Label while having the PDF open would also be nice, but it's not a show-stopper).
Interestingly, there's a roadmap item for watermarking PDFs in SharePoint/OneDrive being rolled out right now (April 2025) per below, but it sounds like it allows end users to apply water marks.
Do you have any further insights on whether there's any traction on watermarking for PDFs within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem as you mentioned in Feburary? This really is the final piece of the Sensitivity Label puzzle for many organisations.
Cheers
Drew
Drew Keenan
