How to remove PDF password

You have just received a new email with a PDF document attached to it that is very important to you and that you have been waiting for a long time, however by clicking on it to view and / or modify it you immediately encountered difficulties due to the presence of a password. If this is indeed the case and if you need an urgent solution to be able to remove PDF passwords, don’t worry, I can explain to you what needs to be done.

Although apparently it may seem a little complicated to do, know that using some special Web services and specific programs to remove PDF passwords becomes a real child’s play. All you need is a little attention and concentration and a few minutes of free time, that’s all, I assure you.

So if it is your intention to find out how to remove PDF password I suggest you get comfortable and concentrate on reading the instructions I am about to give you. You will see that in the end you will be ready to say that using the right resources removing PDF passwords was actually a real breeze. Let it bet?

Before explaining what you need to do to be able to remove PDF passwords, it is good that you know one thing. Documents in PDF format can be protected with two different types of passwords: the owner password , which can prevent files from being printed or modified, and the user password , which completely blocks the viewing of documents. Removing PDF passwords is possible in both cases, however between the two the user password can only be overcome with the brute forcing technique. Having made this necessary premise, let’s get to work immediately!

Remove PDF password in case of owner password

PDFUnlock!

If you want to remove PDF password but do not intend to use special programs on your computer I suggest you use PDFUnlock! . It is a free online service that can remove all major PDF limitations, including passwords, in a matter of seconds.

To remove PDF passwords with PDFUnlock! the first thing you need to do is then to click here to connect to the service’s web page. Then click on the My Computer button  located in the center of the page to select the password protected PDF document from any folder on your computer. Eventually you can also act on documents stored on your Dropbox or Google Drive account by simply clicking on the relevant buttons.

After selecting the file, click on the Unlock button and wait a few seconds for the service to process the document by removing the PDF password.

Once the procedure is complete, the download of the PDF without a password will automatically start on your computer. Open it with any PDF file reader so you can see the removal of the password present in the original version of the document.

Online2PDF

Another great online service thanks to which you can remove PDF passwords is Online2PDF . This is a free service that allows you to process a maximum number of 20 files simultaneously for a total weight of 100MB.

To remove PDF password with Online2PDF the first thing you need to do is to click here to connect to the main web page of the service. Then press the Select files button and indicate the document stored on your computer on which you want to act. Then press the Convert button and wait a few moments for the procedure by which to remove PDF password is started. If you intend to try to remove PDF passwords by acting on multiple documents simultaneously, select them before pressing the Convert button by clicking Browse… .

Once the procedure is finished, the download of the PDF without a password will automatically start on your computer. To verify that everything went well and that the password has actually been removed, I suggest you try to open the file with any PDF reader installed on your multimedia station.

I want to underline that PDFs obtained with Online2PDF do not include fillable fields. This means that if you try to unlock a PDF containing forms, they will no longer be fillable after conversion (in the output file, the input file will remain intact).

Remove PDF password in case of user password

PDFCrack

If you need to remove PDF password and the document you intend to act on is protected by a user password, I invite you to use PDFCrack . This is a free and open source program available for both Windows PCs and Macs . The program, it should be emphasized, does not have a graphical interface so to be able to use it it is necessary to act as a command line.

If you use a Windows PC and want to remove PDF password with PDFCrack, the first thing you need to do is to click here so that you can connect to the program’s website. Then presses on the Download item located in the right sidebar.

Then wait for the download of the program to start and complete, then open the ZIP archive that contains the software and extract the contents to any folder.

Now press and hold the Shift key   on the keyboard and then right-click on the folder where you extracted the program files and select the  Open command window here  item from the menu that appears.

Once this is done, the Command Prompt will open  . Now type the command pdfcrack file.pdf  (where instead of  file.pdf  you have to type the path and the full name of the document to be unlocked) and wait for the program to take effect.

If PDFCrack is able to find the keyword and therefore to remove the PDF password, you will see the message  found user-password  followed by the password needed to view the contents of the PDF.

If you are using a Mac, click here to connect to the PDFCrack website. Then click on the link next to  Looking for the latest version?  and wait for the program download procedure to start and complete.

Then open the TAR archive that contains the software, extract the contents in any folder, open the   OS X Terminal (you can access it from the Other folder   of the Launchpad or by typing terminal in Spotlight and double clicking on the first search result that comes to you shown) and first give the cd command [path where you extracted PDFCrack] (instead of the path where you extracted PDFCrack you will have to indicate the path referring to the location on the Mac where you proceeded to extract the program) and then the make command  -f Makefile .

To conclude, open a new Terminal window and type [path where you extracted PDFCrack] / pdfcrack -u [path and name of the PDF to be unlocked]  (instead of the  path where you extracted PDFCrack  you will have to indicate the path referring to the position on the Mac where you extracted the program while instead of the  path and name of the PDF to be unlocked  you will have to indicate the path referring to the location on the Mac where the PDF to act and the name of the same is located).