HowTo: Linux Remove a PDF File Password Using Command Line Options

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I get lots of e-bills (utility, telephone, the 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 do not 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 options:

  1. pdftk – A handy tool for manipulating PDF file.
  2. qpdf – The qpdf program is used to convert one PDF file to another equivalent PDF file.
  3. xpdf-utils – Portable Document Format (PDF) suite — utilities such as pdftops and ps2pdf.
  4. Print to a file – Use Evince software itself.

How Do I Use pdftk To Remove The Password?

Type the following apt-get 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 apt 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.pdf

How 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
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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Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

43 comment

  1. 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”

  4. If you don’t know the password, use Ghostscript like this:

    gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf

    Regards,

    Nicolas.

    Edited by admin – added code tags.

    1. 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

    3. For removing owner password without knowing it (and all restrictions) use:

      qpdf --decrypt protected.pdf unprotected.pdf

      Note that it won’t work if you don’t know the USER password. OWNER password is only for enforcing restrictions, USER is for opening the file and be able to view it.

  8. 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

  9. the ghostscript command doesn’t seem to work on forms. The file gets decrypted ok, but the form fields get stripped out.

  10. 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.

  11. > 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).

  12. 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

  13. 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.

  14. 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

  15. 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….

  16. I want to open some pdf file which are locked from opening can i use the command line in window os.

  17. I was looking to install qpdf on Centos, but yum install wouldn’t do it. I had to use the following to get it installed.

    Download qpdf source from qpdf.sourceforge.net/
    yum install zlib pcre zlib-devel pcre-devel
    ./configure
    make
    make install

  18. Thanks a lot!!
    $ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf
    it worked! I only waited 10 or 12 minutes!

  19. I made some test.
    1. If the encrypted pdf file set an “file open” password, and you don’t know the password. Then neither pdftk, qpdf nor gs can decrypt the pdf.
    2. If you know either owner or user password, you can decrypt the pdf with qpdf. Though there may have som error message. The idea is that you can open and show the content first.
    3. ghostscript method is great! and I use it on win32, find gs for win32 on http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/ (gs905w32.exe 2012-7-19), download and install
    4.set path for gs, (computer->mouse right click->content->advanced system setup->environment->user variable->add or edit->add path “C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.05\bin”

    want a batch convert on win32? try this
    1.copy all encrypted pdf files into a working directory, and create a sub directory named conv
    2.in cmd mode, in this directory type(in quote”): “dir *.pdf /b >conv.txt”
    3.create a batch file :conv.bat content as
    FOR /F “eol=; usebackq delims==” %%i in (conv.txt) do gswin32c -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=conv/%%i -c .setpdfwrite -f %%i
    4.in cmd mode, in this dir type: “conv”
    5.done! all decrypted files will be sent into sub dir”conv”

  22. I could only remove the password from a file (with probably AES encryption inside) by using MuPDF. No program mentioned above worked with my file.

    mubusy clean -p YOURPASSWORD-HERE input.pdf

    This command generates out.pdf without the password.
    I used a precompiled windows binary from here together with wine:
    http://code.google.com/p/mupdf/downloads/list

    1. Same here, I tried all the above solutions.
      Can you tell me some more about your way. I’m running on win7 and I downloaded muPDF but I dont know where to put the command

    2. If you’re using a newer version of MuPDF (I used the git version from AUR), the name of the tool has changed to:
      mutool clean -p YOUR-PASSWORD input.pdf

      Did work for me, cheers!

  24. What about Excel protected File? How can a person recover a lost password for a .xsls file … :(
    (I’m under macOSx If you have a solution with os command line would be great ;) otherwise i’ll just install a dual boot linux)

    Thank you,

  25. Thanks for the tips but here is what I tried (before I came across this site).

    I knew the password, but it was a pain to enter it every single time I tried to open the file. So I just wanted to strip the password and store as a regular PDF. What I did was:
    1. I opened the PDF file in Okular Ver 0.14.3
    2. Go to File -> Print
    3. Print to a PDF file and gave the name of the output file
    I searched everywhere for an option where I could have stripped it of the password, but there was none.
    4. Viola… without anything being done from my side, a new PDF file was created sans the password protection.

    Okular rocks!!!

  26. Without knowing the password the one line with ghost view worked perfectly! (under Mac OS)

    Thanks!

  27. Only problem with the print-to-pdf versions (evince, okular) of this process is that any forms, indexes, links, etc. will be removed.

  28. It doesn’t work for me:

     gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf
**** This file requires a password for access.
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   1916   1   3   %oparray_pop   1915   1   3   %oparray_pop   1899   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1173/1684(ro)(G)--   --dict:1/20(G)--   --dict:82/200(L)--   --dict:82/200(L)--   --dict:113/127(ro)(G)--   --dict:292/300(ro)(G)--   --dict:22/32(L)--
Current allocation mode is local
GPL Ghostscript 9.10: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

  30. Thanks for the article.

    pdftk – did not work with user_pw / input_pw / owner_pw.
    pdftops – worked, but lost digital signature of the original pdf.
    qpdf – worked, retained the digital signature, great!

  31. Hi,
    In cygwin (can’t say anything on other platforms), the way you describe pdftk does not work. The command seems not to be in the right order.
    If I do: “pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf input_pw PASSWD”
    I always get: OWNER PASSWORD REQUIRED, but not given (or incorrect)
    However, it works great moving “input_pw PASSWD” just after in.pdf and before output command. I mean:
    pdftk in.pdf input_pw PASSWD output out.pdf
    Works great.
    Hope this helps.

  32. pdftk input.pdf input_pw PASSWORD output output.pdf
    worked for me only if the `input_pw` was before the `output` option

  33. I had a weird document that was encrypted without a password. The solution was to decrypt it using qpdf without the password argument.

    qpdf –decrypt input.pdf output.pdf

  34. I found it very useful for my airtel bills and some docs from banks.
    the order of parameters matter to pdftk, hence the input_pw should be used before the output command. Otherwise, the tool does not use the password.

    The title is right in my opinion, as that is what came to my mind for googling, when I needed this.

  36. xpdf-utils 3.02 is a stinker; I would recommend caution before proceeding with installation. On my Ubuntu system, without warning it removed Ghostscript, the Generic CUPS-PDF Printer driver and CUPS, and messed up the backend files for my HP LaserJet, leaving my system with no way of printing anything. Fortunately, when I saw what the xpdf-utils installer had done, I captured the log from the terminal window and saved it as a text file, so I could use it as a guide to restore what xpdf-utils had destroyed. In my opinion, xpdf-utils is an ill-behaved POS that doesn’t belong in any repository. The Xpdf site now shows version 3.04 as the current one, but I wouldn’t bet that the installer is better-behaved than the one I got from the Ubuntu repository.

  37. Found this for bulk removing passwords

    mkdir -p temp && for f in *.pdf ; do qpdf --password=YOURPASSWORDHERE --decrypt "$f" "temp/$f"; done && mv temp/* . && rm -rf temp

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