How to generate a password-less version of a protected PDF

pdfpreview

I have a PDF file that has been password protected. I know the password. The password's only use, in our case, is to protect the PDF during email transmission. Now that I have the PDF, I'd like to remove the password, as it is annoying to have to look-up and type it in every time I want to use the PDF.

In a pre-Lion version of Preview, I was able to print and "Save As PDF" to create a copy of the file that didn't have a password. However, when I try the same maneuver in Lion, the "Save as PDF" entry is greyed-out.

Is there some other software (preferably free) that would let me save the PDF without the password? Some other thing I can do to the file to enable Preview to "Save as PDF"?

Best Answer

Open the document in Preview, select File > Duplicate, enter the file location and save a copy.

You can do a similar thing with File > Export.

Related Solutions

Keep Preview from autoresizing print output

I would use Terminal commands slightly different from @Bart's above, although those work just fine.

To disable Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool false

To restore Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool true

That way, the default stays in Preview's plist, so I don't need some external reminder about that default if I'm poking into it next year when I've forgotten I did this.

Incidentally, the first time I started up Preview after disabling its print scaling, it seemed to hang on launch, so I force-quit and then tried again and it was fine.

Hmm. Tried to edit to make the code lines show...

Print to pdf with Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader 10.x does go out of it's way to hide the normal print options from OS X but you can still get to them by clicking on the Printer... button at the bottom of the Adobe Print Dialog and clicking through the warning not to change things behind Adobe's back.

I don't have a form like you mentioned in red, but try setting all the print options in Adobe to make your form appear as desired (with or without stamps, annotations, sticky notes and summaries, etc...) and then get to the Apple print dialog to attempt a print to PDF.

If Adobe isn't preparing the file for print until after you hit print in the Adobe dialog - then your only recourse is faking it out by defining a new virtual printer. That way adobe is forced to send the data to the mac which will then pop it into a plainer PDF file for you with just the data filled out.

I've not resorted to this, but CUPS-PDF and this tip on making it work with Snow Leopard's sandboxing security looks to be promising. I hope you don't have to resort to that hacky of a solution to save paper waste and time.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Keep Preview from autoresizing print output

Print to pdf with Adobe Reader

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