How to remove the header & footer from a PDF

pdfpdf-readerscreen-reader

How do I remove the header & footer from a PDF? I was successful in opening the PDF in PDF Viewer Plus, selecting crop, all pages, .25" top and bottom. This removes the viewing of the text, however the text is still embedded in the document. When I try to use a screen reader, it still reads the headers and footers even though they are not visible. How do I remove them completely? I tried to print to PDF but it created an 80 MB image based PDF and lost all text information. I need to keep the text. I tried PDF Scissors also and it too just hid the text, which was still in the file.

Best Answer

Open PDF in PDF Viewer Plus > Save as XPS > Open XPS in 7-Zip > Extract to folder > Open document\Pages\1.fpage in Notepad++ (is XML) > File/Global search & replace the header and footer > Create .zip file with 7-Zip > Rename to .xps > Open in PDF Reader (XPS not an option but it will open it anyways with wrong title bar) > File > Save As > Document_Fixed.pdf > Open in Foxit Reader > Engage screen reader > Voilá!

Update: Saving as XPS will position each individual word on the page, and the resulting screen reader rendition is a jumble of individual words in quick succession with all cadence and sentence structure lost! It is impossible to listen to.

Instead, in Foxit > File > Save As > TXT > Open in Notepad++ > Search & Replace '---- Page 1----' using regular expression and replacing with blank > Search & Replace header/footer > Save > Open in Open Office Writer > Fiddle with page margins and font size to approximate original PDF > Saves as document_fixed.PDF > Open in FoxIt > Engage screen reader > Voilá!

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Please post your results :)

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