Add AES-256 password protection to confidential files or remove known restrictions from owned documents.
Applies or unlocks industry-standard AES encryption to control permissions for viewing, printing, copying, and form editing.
Securing sensitive payroll data before emailing, or stripping forgotten edit passwords from internal archives.
Ranked by feature completeness, privacy safety, and ease of use.
Comprehensive suite of web PDF editing, merging, conversion, and compression tools.
iLovePDF is one of the most widely used online PDF toolboxes, providing instant file compression, merging, splitting, OCR text extraction, and PDF to Word/Office conversion.
100% free document utility suite and PDF editor by geek software GmbH.
PDF24 Tools is an all-in-one free PDF toolbox. Features over 30 online tools and the offline PDF24 Creator desktop app with GDPR-compliant auto-deletion and zero paywalls.
Polished document management suite with e-signatures and OCR conversion.
Smallpdf delivers a modern, high-precision web PDF editor, offering e-signing, AI document summarization, scan OCR, and seamless cloud syncing.
In-browser interactive PDF text editing, form filling, and page extraction.
Sejda is one of the few web tools that allows you to directly edit existing text inside a PDF, fill out interactive forms, add annotations, and sign documents.
Common questions and practical advice for completing this task.
For strongly encrypted user passwords (AES-256), brute-force recovery is computationally infeasible without the original key. Tools can only remove owner permission restrictions or unlock files with known passwords.
Shrink large PDF documents for email attachments, web upload limits, and fast archiving without destroying text readability.
Combine separate PDF pages, certificates, receipts, and project portfolios into an organized, unified document in custom order.
Add drawn, typed, or image electronic signatures to PDF contracts, or remove visual signatures, redact sensitive fields, and flatten documents.