PDF unlocking software

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dafman

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Topic # 228871 26-Jan-2018 14:14

I want to purchase legitimate software for unlocking protected PDF documents (as I want to be able to copy text into another document).

Trouble is, looking at options on the web, it's hard to tell spam/malicious versus genuine proven software from a reputable vendor.

Can anyone assist?

Thanks in advance.

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Reply # 1947183 26-Jan-2018 14:18

Adobe?

They have various packages.

i once found a pdf to text app.... cant remember what it was called sorry as no longer use it.

freitasm

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Reply # 1947186 26-Jan-2018 14:34

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Adobe Creative Cloud.

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kingdragonfly

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Reply # 1947188 26-Jan-2018 14:42

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When someone save a PDF document, they can choose to protect it.

This is intentionally designed to disable printing, editing and copying to clipboard.

It's by design, and the protection is by a password.

PDF protection is a very good sign that it's protected by intellectual property rights.

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/acrobat/pdfs/adobe-acrobat-xi-protect-pdf-file-with-permissions-tutorial-ue.pdf

kiwicam

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Reply # 1947198 26-Jan-2018 15:03

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Keep in mind that not all PDFs are generated in efficient ways. Often text in PDFs isn't encoded as text but is just an embedded image. Then no unlocking will help, you'll need OCR.

Are you actually being prompted that it is protected or does the text just not highlight? If it's the later, it's probably just not encoded as text.

dafman

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Reply # 1947200 26-Jan-2018 15:03

kingdragonfly: When someone save a PDF document, they can choose to protect it.

This is intentionally designed to disable printing, editing and copying to clipboard.

It's by design, and the protection is by a password.

PDF protection is a very good sign that it's protected by intellectual property rights.

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/acrobat/pdfs/adobe-acrobat-xi-protect-pdf-file-with-permissions-tutorial-ue.pdf

Thanks. For avoidance of doubt, I'm not going to breach any intellectual property rights - I just need to copy portions of regulatory text into a wider discussion document.

freitasm

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Reply # 1947203 26-Jan-2018 15:11

If the document is password protect then basically any software will be "dodgy". Adobe Acrobat will unlock it if you have the password. Or you can ask the author for a copy of the document in another format.

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mentalinc

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Reply # 1947210 26-Jan-2018 15:26

Is it legislation http://www.legislation.govt.nz/ or regulation you're after?

check its not available as html on a .govt site.

if you dont have the password you need hacking tools

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Lias

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Reply # 1947214 26-Jan-2018 15:39

I'd go down the OCR path

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BarTender

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Reply # 1947244 26-Jan-2018 16:59

Elcomsoft has a myriad of unlocking tools including one for PDFs. I have in the very distant past (10+ years ago) had to unlock a PDF created internally that no one could remember the password for and the source document had been lost. It worked for our very simple use case. But I suspect any recent PDFs will be encrypted so YMMV.

coffeebaron

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Reply # 1947247 26-Jan-2018 17:02

https://www.ilovepdf.com

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UncleArk

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Reply # 1947353 26-Jan-2018 22:54

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Things I've resorted to which actually work quite well...

Simply print and scan and create a new document, or, print to a PDF printer driver which "prints" a new file.

gehenna

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Reply # 1947376 26-Jan-2018 22:57

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There's a little menubar applet that I used to use on Mac if you're on that platform. Pretty sure it was called Picatext or some variation of that. Basically it let you choose an area of the screen with text on it, and it would OCR the text and let you paste it into another document. I used it on PDF's often.

MikeAqua

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Reply # 1948119 29-Jan-2018 13:08

I can usually print a locked PDF to a new PDF file with a different name, which is then editable.

I use Nuance PDF which has built in Print to PDF function.

This won't work if the author has locked out printing.

Mike

farcus

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Reply # 1948194 29-Jan-2018 15:43

Okular (KDE / Plasma 5 PDF reader) has a checkbox in settings for "obey DRM limitations"
Unchecking this allows printing / text selection of DRM protected pdf files.

Not sure if Okular installer is available for windows or not.

frankv

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Reply # 1948206 29-Jan-2018 16:06

Extracting text from a PDF is a can of worms. There is the "text stored as an image" problem alluded to above. But also, PDF is a layout language, so a block of text text is broken up into multiple strings, each of which is stored with an X,Y page location. Typically these strings are one or two characters long, and spaces aren't stored. You need to re-assemble all these strings and figure out where the space characters need to go, based on the location on the page and text direction. That's not too difficult for blocks of text written all the same size in a monospaced font; throw in tables, varying font sizes, and super/subscripts and things easily get scrambled.

If you do want to try, there's PDFBox which is an open-source Java toolbox for dealing with PDFs. Amongst other stuff, it includes command-line tools to decrypt PDFs.

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