3 Simple Ways to Remove Password From PDF Files for Free

Why it matter: While the reasons for locking a PDF file can be as varied as the reasons for creating it, there are essentially two main reasons to lock a PDF: to control who can access the document, or to control who can alter the document. But the problems is when you can’t even remember it by yourself, this is why this comes in handy.

You may have several password protected PDF files in your computer such as your credit card statements, other bank statements, or some sensitive documents etc. Then it’s quite normal to have them passworded.

It can be monotonous and tiresome to type the password each time you need to open the PDF file. In such cases, you can remove the password protection from a PDF file by decrypting it. PDF decryption is very easy but requires specialized software to do that.

In this tutorial, you will see how to remove password from PDF file in three distinct methods. The easiest and recommended way to remove password is using the browser and without spending any penny.

Remove PDF file password using any Web Browser

You will be quite surprised to know that you can actually use your web browser as PDF password remover tool. The main advantage of this trick is that you require no extra software to remove PDF passwords.

Furthermore, the time required is the least in this case. The trick for removing PDF file password using browser alone is to open the PDF file in the browser and then downloading it from the print option. Even though the process is same for every browser, but sometimes this may be vary.

Open the PDF file in the web browser by dragging and dropping the PDF file into a new tab. If that doesn’t work, right click on the PDF file and click open with option. Then select your browser from the list. But for this sake of this tutorial I’m using Chrome.

• Right click on the file and hit print.
• Choose the printer as “Microsoft Print to PDF” and click on print.
• This should download the PDF file containing no passwords.
• If you have trouble in any of these steps, please leave a comment below and I will help you.

Remove password from PDF using Web Application

The main advantage of the trick is that it can be used to unlock PDF files right from your mobile device or tablet. However, decrypting PDF files of huge size is is not efficient with this method as the time taken for uploading, decrypting and downloading is high.

There are several websites that offer free password removal from PDF files. We will take a look at some of the most popular PDF password remover websites. You can unlock PDF files using web applications no matter what platform you use i.e this method works for windows, mac, android, ios, etc.

• Unlock PDF
• Unlock Password allows you to remove PDF passwords instantly if you know the password. You can even remove passwords from files that you don’t own provided the PDF is weakly encrypted. Another cool feature of UnlockPDF is that you can add the password protected PDF from your cloud storage such as Google drive and dropbox. 
• PDF Unlock
• PDF Unlock is another popular site that allows you to remove password and restrictions from PDF file. You can add PDF files by dragging and dropping from your computer. Like UnlockPDF, this site also supports importing PDFs from cloud storage locations.

Remove PDF password using PDF Password Remover Software

Even though we have discussed two ways to remove PDF password, the fastest and the guaranteed decryption is achieved by using a PDF file password remover software. There are several such software but most of them are not free. One such software is Elcomsoft’sAdvanced PDF Password Recovery software (APDFPR). The software is actually used to recover lost PDF password but it also packs a PDF decryption feature. To remove PDF encryption,

Launch the APDFPR software and then click the open button located at the top left.

Select the password protected PDF file from the dialog box and hit open.

It will now ask you for the PDF file password. Enter the password and hit “Decrypt Now” to unlock the PDF instantly. If you don’t know the PDF password, choose the “Start Recovery” option and wait for the recovery process to complete.

The steps to recover lost PDF password are similar to recovering lost zip file passwords.