About Unlock PDF
A password is useful until it is a nuisance. A document you open every week does not need to ask for a password each time, and a file that must be passed to a colleague or imported into another system often cannot be locked. If you know the password, there is no reason to keep typing it.
This tool opens a protected PDF with the password you give it and writes out a copy with no password. It happens in your browser, and neither the file nor the password is uploaded. You need a free account to use it, because removing protection from a document is worth having a name against.
How to remove a password from a PDF
- Sign in with a free account. Unlock is the one tool that asks, since taking protection off a document should be tied to someone.
- Choose the protected PDF.
- Enter the password that opens it, in the Password box.
- Press the button. The file is opened the way any reader opens it, and a copy is written out without protection.
- Save the new file. Keep or delete the original as you see fit.
When you would use it
- Removing a password from a file you open often.
- Preparing a protected file to be merged, split, signed or converted by tools that cannot handle encryption.
- Making a copy for a colleague who has been given permission to see it.
- Removing protection before archiving a document as PDF/A, which does not allow encryption.
- Giving your own old documents a fresh, unprotected copy.
What it will not do
- You must know the password. This opens the file in the normal way and writes out what it read. It is not a way past a password that nobody knows, and it does not try to guess one.
- It is for documents you own or are allowed to open. Removing protection from a document that you have no right to is not something this tool is for.
- Some files have only a permissions password, which stops printing or editing but does not stop opening. Those can often be opened without a password; where one is needed, enter it.
- It removes encryption, not the document’s content. Nothing in the pages is changed.
- To put a password back, use Protect PDF.
How it compares
Most PDF programs can "save as" without a password once you have opened the file, which is the same thing done by hand. This is the quick route when you are not at your own machine.
Services that promise to crack a lost password are a different thing, and have no place here. The password in the file is the protection, and it is working as intended.
Tips
- Type the password carefully. A wrong password simply fails; it does no harm.
- Delete the unprotected copy when you are done with it if the content is sensitive.
- If a file refuses a password you are sure is right, check caps lock and the keyboard layout, and whether a trailing space was copied along with it. PDF passwords are case sensitive. If the password was sent to you in a message, copy it from the message rather than retyping it.