Remove a password from a PDF

The steps

Open the unlock tool and choose the protected PDF. The page reads the file and tells you which kind of protection is on it before asking for anything. Type the password, press the button, and download the unlocked copy.

It runs in the browser tab. The file is not uploaded, the password is not sent anywhere, and the analytics on this site never receive an input value of any kind. That matters more here than on most tools, because a password typed into a web form is normally a password you have given away.

Two locks that look the same and are not

A PDF can be locked in two ways, and they behave nothing alike.

• An open password stops the file being read at all: your viewer shows a dialog before it shows any content.
• A permissions password leaves the file readable but marks it as not to be printed, copied or edited.

The second kind opens without you typing anything, so people often do not realise their file is encrypted at all until something refuses to work. The unlock tool reads the file first and says which of the two you have, which is why it does not ask for a password until it knows one is needed.

What the unlocked copy keeps

Everything on the pages. The copy is built by taking every page from the original into a fresh document, so text stays selectable, images keep their pixels, page sizes stay the same and links inside a page still work.

The document properties are carried across as well: title, author, subject, keywords, producer and the creation and modification dates come with it. That is different from merging, which clears them, and it is deliberate: an unlocked copy is meant to be the same document without the lock, not a stripped one.

It is a copy, not a change to the original

The protected file you started with is untouched and still protected. What you download is a second file. Keep that in mind when you name it, because two PDFs with the same name in a downloads folder is how the wrong one gets sent.

The copy is genuinely unencrypted, not one with the password hidden somewhere. The tool proves it by reopening the finished file without supplying any password and checking that it is no longer encrypted. If that check fails, nothing is offered for download.

What this will not do

It will not guess, crack or recover a password. A wrong password gets a plain message saying it did not open the file, and that is the end of the road. There is no hidden second attempt and no back door to find.

That is not a limitation of this tool in particular. PDF protection uses real encryption, and the file cannot be read without the key the password produces. Any site promising to open an arbitrary protected PDF for you is either wrong or wants your file. The forgotten password guide covers what is actually left to try.

Putting protection back

If you removed the password to work on a document and want it protected again afterwards, the protect page sets a new one. The same password serves as both the open password and the owner password, and every permission is granted, so the file is either open to you or closed, with nothing in between.

A PDF that follows the PDF/A archival format is refused rather than protected, because encryption breaks that format. The password hub lists the rest of the cluster.