How do I circumvent PDF editing security?
Some of us deal with a plethora of PDF documents. Perhaps we need to make various edits and comments to the documents, or maybe we need to convert the PDFs into a different format like a Word document. Unfortunately, depending on the sources that we acquire our PDFs from, some of the files may in fact be secured, meaning no edits or changes can be allowed on the document for content integrity reasons.
At this point, some engineers throw their hands up in dismay, knowing that they can’t directly save the document out to a different format. Fortunately, the grand majority of secured PDFs I have worked with in the past, like the ones from the IEEE consortium, can be unlocked using an incredibly easy “print to file” trick.
Granted, you won’t be unlocking the file itself per-se, but you can generate an unlocked equivalent that can be edited and manipulated to your heart’s content. First off, open the document that you wish to unlock in Adobe Acrobat Reader and click File, then Print. Next, in the printers list, select “Microsoft XPS Document Writer” and then click Print.
