How to Remove Encryption from a PDF File

There are times when a PDF file requires encryption especially if they carry sensitive information. However, in the given situation where your drive is already encrypted or you keep your files in a sensitive container, then it turns out to be an annoyance more than anything else.

So, here is how you can remove PDF encryption only if you are the intended recipient of a file and have the password too.

For starters, and the simplest way to do this is via a PDF printer driver – a program that appears to print documents but actually converts these documents into a PDF file.

You might already have a number of them installed on your computer but just in case you don’t, BullZip PDF Printer might do just the job. Also, a PDF Reader such as Foxit Reader will be necessary since Adobe blocks this workaround.

Also, when you install BullZip PDF printer, make sure that you install another three programs as asked along with it and that will help it to work properly.

So, load the file with Foxit Reader, and then enter the password when necessary. After this, hit Ctrl-p and print it to your PDF “printer”. This will give you an exact copy of the original but minus the encryption.

Apart from this, there are free cloud-based tools with PDFUnlock being one of them that carry out the same task but it isn’t advisable to download an unecrypted version of the PDF file from the website especially when you have a simpler offline method.