PDF tools · passwords
Take the password off a PDF that is yours, so it opens like an ordinary file again. The work runs in your browser; the file and the password never leave this page.
If a PDF asks for a password before it will open, that password must be known and typed here. There is no other way, on this site or any other. If you have forgotten it, this page cannot help, and neither can anyone else.
Some PDFs open fine but will not print, copy or edit. That kind is a set of permission switches, and it can be taken off without typing it, because that is how PDF permissions work in every tool. It is not a trick, and it is not breaking in.
Your files only: only take passwords off your own files, or files you have permission to change. You are responsible for that right.
The password is typed into this page and used inside this page. It is never sent anywhere, and it is gone when the page closes. The check-it-yourself page lets you watch that happen, like every other job here.
For your own PDF whose password you know, or whose print, copy and edit switches you want back.
Pick the PDF
Type the password, if it asks for one
Take it off and download
Drop a PDF on the tray, or click to pick one
PDF · it stays on this device
Leave the box empty if the file opens without one: that is the permission kind, and its switches come off with nothing typed. If the file asks for a password to open, type it exactly; a wrong one simply does not open the file, and the page will say so.
Pick a PDF to begin.
The page opens the file with the password (or with the empty password, for the permission kind), then re-saves it with the protection left out entirely: not just the password prompt, but the old protection machinery itself, so the finished file carries no trace of it. The result is checked before download: it must open with no password and hold every page the original held. Your protected original is never changed.
An open password that is not known cannot be helped, by this page or any other; that is the whole point of the lock. A signed file keeps its signature through the re-save, but the signature will no longer verify as untouched, because the bytes changed; keep the original as the record. Files whose insides this page cannot read are refused in the open, never guessed at.
No, and no page can. If a PDF asks for a password before it will open, that password has to be known and typed. A page that promises to open such a file without it is describing the other kind of password (the permission switches) while letting you believe it means this one. We do not write that promise, here or anywhere.
No. A permissions password does not lock the content away: the file already opens, and the restrictions are switches a reader agrees to honour. Taking them off is re-saving the file without the switches. Every serious PDF tool does it, and the PDF standard itself names it as a separate thing from opening a locked file.
Nowhere. It is typed into this page and used inside this page, in your browser, and it is gone when the page closes. The check-it-yourself page lets you watch the network while a job runs, this one included.
Yes, in our own testing: this tool was checked against files protected with every standard password kind, including a filled form, a file with attachments, a file carrying a signature, and a 300-page file. Pages, form answers and attachments all came through whole, and the finished file was re-opened and counted before the download was offered.
The signature is carried over with the file, but any re-save, here or in any tool, means the signed bytes are no longer the exact bytes that were signed, so the signature will no longer verify as untouched. If a signature must stay provable, keep the protected original as the record and treat the unlocked copy as a working copy.