Edit or remove PDF metadata

How to use it#

1. Drop a PDF onto the box above, or click it to choose one.
2. Edit the title, author, subject, keywords, and dates. Leave a field empty to remove it.
3. Remove any extra fields the document carries, or press Clear every field to empty them all at once. Restore original brings back what the file had.
4. Download the PDF once it says it has been rebuilt. The copy is named so it cannot be mistaken for the original.

What a PDF says about itself, and who sees it#

Every PDF can carry a title, an author, a subject, keywords, the dates it was created and last changed, and the names of the programs that made it. Most of it is filled in without anyone deciding to: the author is usually the name on the account of the computer or the word processor, the title is often the original file name, and the two program fields record, for instance, the word processor that wrote the document and the printer driver that turned it into a PDF.

Anyone who opens the file can read all of it in the document properties, and some of it is more visible than that. Browsers show the title on the tab, search engines use it as the headline of the result when the PDF is published, and file browsers show the author in their details view. A report sent to a client titled "Draft v3, do not send", or an author field naming a former employee, is the kind of thing that turns up.

The copies you cannot see in the fields#

Newer PDFs keep a second copy of these properties in a block of XML called XMP, and Acrobat shows that copy in preference to the ordinary fields when both are there. Editing only the fields would leave Acrobat showing the old title, so the XMP copy is removed when the file is saved. It sometimes holds an editing history as well, which goes with it.

Photos placed in a PDF keep the EXIF data their camera wrote, including the GPS position of a phone photo, and no PDF reader ever shows it. The editor takes that out of every JPEG photo in the document without re-compressing it, and says how many it found. Old versions of the properties left behind by earlier saves are dropped too, so a cleared author is gone from the file rather than merely hidden.

What this does not change#

The pages are not touched: the text, the pictures, the links, and any form fields come through as they were, though the file is rewritten and may change size slightly. Metadata is only the details about the document, so a name that appears in the text itself, in a comment, or in a header is still there. The redaction tool removes text from the pages themselves.

A password-protected PDF, or one locked against changes, has to be unlocked first with the PDF password remover, because its properties cannot be rewritten while it is encrypted. A file made to the PDF/A archiving standard stops claiming to be PDF/A once its XMP copy is gone, which matters only if an archive is going to check it.