I get lots of e-bills (utility, telephone, Internet, mobile, cable and so on) in a PDF format for my small business and I need to forward those to my accountant. However, all PDFs files are password protected. I don't want to share my account password with anyone to just open my bills. Evince is a PDF document viewer capable of displaying password protected files but it cannot remove the password. How do I remove a password from all PDFs under Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution in a batch mode?
You can remove the password using various utilities under Linux. Use any one of the following option:
- pdftk - A handy tool for manipulating PDF file.
- qpdf - The qpdf program is used to convert one PDF file to another equivalent PDF file.
- xpdf-utils - Portable Document Format (PDF) suite -- utilities such as pdftops and ps2pdf.
- Print to a file - Use Evince software itself.
How Do I Use pdftk To Remove The Password?
Type the following command to install the pdftk (note it will install java too, if you do not like java, just use another tool):
$ sudo apt-get install pdftk
Decrypt a PDF called input.pdf with YOURPASSWORD-HERE password and create unencrypted output.pdf, enter:
pdftk input.pdf output output.pdf user_pw YOURPASSWORD-HERE
OR
pdftk input.pdf output output.pdf user_pw YOURPASSWORD-HERE owner_pw YOURPASSWORD-HERE
OR
pdftk input.pdf output output.pdf input_pw YOURPASSWORD-HERE
Where,
- input_pw password : Input PDF owner passwords
- user_pw password : Input PDF user passwords
- owner_pw password : Input PDF owner passwords same as input_pw.
How Do I Use qpdf To Remove The Password?
Type the following command to install the qpdf:
$ sudo apt-get install qpdf
Decrypt a PDF called input.pdf with YOURPASSWORD-HERE password and create unencrypted output.pdf, enter:
qpdf --password=YOURPASSWORD-HERE --decrypt input.pdf output.pdfHow Do I Use xpdf-utils To Remove The Password?
Type the following command to install the qpdf:
$ sudo apt-get install xpdf-utils
First, decrypt a PDF and create a postscript file, enter:
pdftops -upw YOURPASSWORD-HERE input.pdf
You will get input.ps file. This can be printed or open under Linux itself. But, you can convert it back .ps file (postscript)back to a PDF as follows:
ps2pdf input.ps
Please note that the ps2pdf command is part of ghostscript and it will get installed when you run xpdf-utils.
How Do I Use evince To Remove The Password?
Open a pdf file using evince itself, enter:
evince input.pdf
Enter your password. Once opened click on File > Print > Select "Print to file" > Select "PDF" as output format and click on Print.
Fig.01: PDF file remove password with evince print option
Writing a shell script left as an exercise to the readers.
If You Don't Know The Password, Use Ghostscript Like This
Update: nickwe pointed out the following command:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
You didn’t “Remove” the password, you just change it and only because you know the owner password. If I send you a pdf with my password you’ll not be able to change anything, maybe you should change you’re title to “Linux Update a PDF File Password Using Command Line Options”
M.M is right.
Very well written and overcome lots of irritating passwords. Very good note.
If you don’t know the password, use Ghostscript like this:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdfRegards,
Nicolas.
Edited by admin – added code tags.
Hi,
that gs command on linux doesnt work with certain PDFs… wherease those some PDFs are correctly de-crypted with that command on Windows.
Does an alternative method exist for removing protections from PDFs on linux ?
thank you
You could just ‘print’ the file to postscript, and then use ps2pdf to make a new pdf.
Thanks a lot, Nicolas, that worked perfectly :-)
Very Very Good
The ghostscript command does not work :(
[nilesh@Linux Nilesh]$ gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f /home/nilesh/1.10532926.pdf
**** This file requires a password for access.
**** The file was produced by:
**** >>>> [ReportSuite Version 6.0.0] on AIX <<<<
Error: /invalidfileaccess in pdf_process_Encrypt
Operand stack:
Execution stack:
%interp_exit .runexec2 –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– 2 %stopped_push –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– false 1 %stopped_push 1878 1 3 %oparray_pop 1877 1 3 %oparray_pop 1861 1 3 %oparray_pop –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– false 1 %stopped_push
Dictionary stack:
–dict:1151/1684(ro)(G)– –dict:1/20(G)– –dict:75/200(L)– –dict:75/200(L)– –dict:108/127(ro)(G)– –dict:288/300(ro)(G)– –dict:18/25(L)–
Current allocation mode is local
GPL Ghostscript 8.71: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1
the ghostscript command doesn’t seem to work on forms. The file gets decrypted ok, but the form fields get stripped out.
In my case, I knew the User-password (although I didn’t know the Owner-password). Here is my experience when using these tools:
pdftk – It requires the Owner-password.
qpdf – Worked perfectly!
xpdf-utils – I’d like to avoid PDF -> PS -> PDF, as it could increase the file size and maybe lose some PDF features.
Print to a file (using Evince) – It works, but the final PDF was 3 (or more) times larger than the original.
So, the best solution for me was qpdf, as it converted a PDF directly to another PDF, kept the file size almost the same as the original (in fact, it shrunk a little), and it worked fine with the only password I had.
> pdftk – It requires the Owner-password.
> qpdf – Worked perfectly!
same for me, including
>the best solution for me was qpdf, as it converted a PDF directly to another PDF,
>kept the file size almost the same as the original
in my case there was a very small increase of a file size, 5.38 Mb (encrypted) -> 5.40 Mb (decrypted).
martin writes: Hi Denilson — I enjoy your blog very much , but now I have a question of different sort ; my friends from Poland just went to Rio for 10 months to keep their 15 year old daughter away from bad influences in Warsaw , – they took an Asus EEE PC 120 A comp with them but forgot to pack the powering cable with them … so now they are in Rio and can’t charge up their comp . I will try to locate their cable and ship it to them but at the same time I was curious that perhaps you ( being in Rio) may suggest some better solution for them (shipping takes quite a long time ) –I would appreciate very much any of your thoughts on that matter — my email is ; intrasport@yahoo.com best wishes –yours truly –martin alexander
evince isn’t a true command line option as it requires X and my servers don’t have X so not even a viable solution. I also agree with MM as I don’t have the passwords to the documents I’ve been sent but still need to read the PDFs to place in the correct place on our servers and none of these options provide a solution.
Hi,
Thank you very much for this useful infos.
Nickwe comment is working for me.
(gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf)
Robert
i used command called CAT > telnet.pdf after using this command my entire pdf file are not opening what do i do now? please any one can help me out….
I want to open some pdf file which are locked from opening can i use the command line in window os.