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Protect & check

These tools guard a PDF with a password, remove hidden information, or check that a file is sound. Each opens as its own page: drop a file, set the few options it needs, and press the one button.

Before you start​

You need a PDF. Protect with a password, Remove a password, Flatten PDF and Sanitize PDF need the online engine — on desktop, without a connection, each shows "Needs an internet connection to <verb> PDFs" and disables its button; in the browser, an unreachable engine shows "This tool needs the online engine, which is unreachable right now." Compare PDFs needs exactly two files.

Tips​

  • Protect with a password and Remove a password are opposites — use Protect to lock a file down, Remove to open one back up once you have its password.
  • Sanitizing removes document details, attachments, scripts, links and comments — it does not touch the visible content of the pages. Use Black out in the editor for hiding what's actually printed on a page.
  • Flattening drops links along with form fields and comments — if you need to keep a page's hyperlinks working, sanitize instead (leaving "Remove links and comments" unticked) or don't flatten it.
  • Compare only reads text, so run OCR first on a scanned file before comparing it.
  • On Edit metadata, leaving a box exactly as it was read keeps that value — only an emptied box is treated as a removal.
  • If a simple tool page isn't giving you what you need, Open in full editor (shown under the file when there's just one) hands the same file to the full editor with this tool already selected.