How to Remove a Password From a PDF You Own

Typing a password every time you open your own bank statement or payslip soon gets tiresome, and a protected file gets in the way of merging, signing or converting it. Taking the password off is quick when you know it. When you do not know it, the password is doing exactly what it was designed to do, and no honest tool can simply remove it. This guide covers both situations, starting with how to tell which kind of protection you are dealing with.

First, Work Out Which Kind of Password It Is

PDFs have two kinds of password, and they behave differently:

An open password. The PDF asks for a password before it shows anything. The contents are encrypted, and the password is needed to read them.
A permissions password only. The PDF opens normally, but you cannot print it, copy text from it, or edit it. Adobe Acrobat shows "(SECURED)" in the title bar of such files. This password limits what you can do, not whether you can read it.

There is a third possibility: the file does not open at all, and it does not ask for a password either. That usually means the file is damaged or incomplete, not locked. Our Unlock PDF tool checks for this, and tells you when "no password was found". In that case, see our guide on what to do when a PDF will not open.

Removing an Open Password You Know

If you can open the file with a password, there are several ways to save a copy without it.

Use Unlock PDF. Add the PDF to Unlock PDF, type the password it is protected with, and download the unlocked copy. The file and the password are sent to a document conversion provider, which states that it deletes the file and the result within three hours, and the password is used only for that file. If the password is wrong, the tool says so rather than handing back a broken file.

Use Adobe Acrobat Pro. If you have the paid version, open the file, go to its document properties, and on the Security tab change the security method to No Security. If the file also has a permissions password, Acrobat will ask for that too. The free Acrobat Reader cannot remove passwords.

Print it to a new PDF. Open the file with its password, choose Print, and pick "Microsoft Print to PDF" on Windows or "Save as PDF" in a browser or on a Mac. The new file has no password. This is a reprint, not a copy, so it has costs: links, bookmarks, form fields, comments and attachments are usually lost, and some programs turn pages into images, which makes the text unsearchable. It also only works if the file allows printing.

Removing a Permissions Password

To lift printing or copying restrictions properly, you need the permissions password. Acrobat Pro asks for it when you change the security method, as described above.

If you do not have it, the restriction was usually set on purpose by whoever published the document. The right move is to ask them for an unrestricted copy, or for the specific thing you need, such as a printable version. Our Terms allow you to remove protection only from files you own or are authorized to unlock, using a password you are entitled to use, and that is a sound rule whatever tool you use.

When You Have Forgotten the Password

There is no back door. The password is part of how the encryption key is made, so without it the contents cannot be decrypted, by us or by anyone else. Services that claim to "remove" an unknown password are guessing it: they try dictionaries of common passwords and then every combination they can, as fast as their computers allow.

Guessing works against short or common passwords, and against very old files that use 40-bit encryption, whose keys can be broken regardless of the password. Against a long password protecting a file with modern AES encryption, it is hopeless.

Before you try anything like that, try the practical routes:

Check where the file came from. Banks, mobile operators, payroll systems and tax offices often protect statements with a password built from details they hold, such as part of your date of birth or an account number. The email that came with the file, or the sender's help pages, usually explain the pattern.
Get a fresh copy. Many portals let you download the same document again, sometimes without a password, and a sender can usually resend it.
Look for the original. If you protected the file yourself, the unprotected version may still be in your Documents or Downloads folder, in the sent items of your email, or in your cloud storage's version history. Your password manager may also have saved the password.

Unlock PDF cannot help here. It needs the correct password, and it never tries to guess one.

Why Unlock at All

Apart from convenience, the usual reason is that a protected file cannot be worked on. Our tools that read a PDF, including PDF Merger, Sign PDF, PDF to Word, PDF to Excel and Compress PDF, cannot open a file that needs a password. Sign PDF goes further and turns away a PDF with any password, even a permissions password alone, because it has to save the signed file again.

The usual sequence is therefore: unlock, make your changes, and if the document should stay protected, protect it again as the final step. You can choose a new password at that point.

Look After the Unlocked Copy

An unlocked PDF has no protection at all. Anyone who gets hold of it can read it, and it will turn up in searches on your own computer. A few habits help:

Do not leave unlocked copies of statements and payslips in a shared Downloads folder, or on a shared computer.
Delete the unlocked copy when you no longer need it, and keep the protected original.
If you need to send the document on, protect it again first, and send the password separately from the file.

Conclusion

Removing a password from a PDF you own is easy when you know the password, and it should not be possible when you do not. Work out which kind of password the file has, use Unlock PDF or Acrobat for a clean copy, and avoid printing to PDF unless you can afford to lose links and form fields. If the password is lost, the person or organization that created the file is your best way back in.

Know the password and want it gone? Try Unlock PDF.

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