[SheerGold]

I have some pdf documents that I would like to print.
But printing has been disabled.
It would also be helpful to be able to copy sections of the text.

Removal of passwords on pdf documents is legal. Microsoft even gives it's approval.

There are many password protection programs that one can buy.

Plus there are free trials. But they will only work on a few pages, etc.

Does anyone know of free pdf password removers that don't have restrictions on their use?

[OreoCookie]

You can do it via the command line in the Terminal: convert the document to postscript and then back to pdf.

Code:
pdf2ps document.pdf

Code:
ps2pdf document.ps document_noprotection.pdf

Here, document.pdf is the name of the protected document. The first line will create a file with the same name, but the ending .ps instead of .pdf. If you don't add the second file name in the second command, ps2pdf will overwrite your original file (not a good idea).

That has worked for me. (Some scientific books now come with an electronic version that you cannot print. Sometimes you need to make copies of pages, so it's actually easier and cleaner to print the pages again.)

[philm]

PDFLab might work?

[SheerGold]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

You can do it via the command line: convert the document to postscript and then back to pdf.

Code:
pdf2ps document.pdf

Code:
ps2pdf document.ps document_noprotection.pdf

That has worked for me. (Some scientific books now come with an electronic version that you cannot print. Sometimes you need to make copies of pages, so it's actually easier and cleaner to print the pages again.)

Hi OreoCookie,
Thank you for this info.
But I have only rarely used the command line before
When in terminal how do I select the pdf file to perform the operation on?
Can you please provide more explanation.
Say, for instance the file has name xyz.pdf and is on the desktop, what would be the steps I should make to use the procedure you advise.

[OreoCookie]

You can get ghostscript here (it's in the MacTeX Additions package).

After successful installation, you launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities) and type

Code:
cd Desktop

Confirm each line with enter, of course.
Then you type the lines above, but you replace document.pdf with xyz.pdf.