Removing PDF usage restrictions

Question

I have several PDF documents which have the "no copy" and "no print" restriction bits set. Are there any free tools for removing such restrictions, on Linux?

I tried pdf2ps | ps2pdf but the size increase is horrible. The originals are fairly large too, so I'd rather use a local tool than a website.

tokland · Answer 1 · 2017-12-16T14:47:17.280

114

With qpdf:

$ qpdf --decrypt restricted-input.pdf unrestricted-output.pdf

edited Dec 16 '17 at 14:47

answered Dec 10 '14 at 17:51

tokland

1,370

score 37 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 14 '11 at 13:59

37

You can probably use pdftk. Something like

pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf allow AllFeatures

should do the job.

edited Dec 14 '11 at 13:59

Sathyajith Bhat

62,374

answered Dec 12 '11 at 15:19

u-punkt

546

score 20 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 20 '13 at 17:44

20

If you've got ghostscript installed try simply:

gs -sPDFPassword=$PASS -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=%stdout% -c .setpdfwrite -f locked.pdf > unlocked.pdf

edited Aug 20 '13 at 17:44

Community

1

answered Dec 13 '11 at 01:05

thebodzio

578
2
10

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 13 '11 at 01:25

FOSS-wise, there is PDFCrack, not sure if it does actually remove the security though, it's just a password cracker. I generally turn to some free trial software, A-PDF Restrictions Remover, it's easier to use.

It might be a lot harder if it's a recent PDF version though, I think they really increased the security recently.

Removing PDF usage restrictions

4 Answers4

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