5 Free and Easy Methods to Unlock PDF Without Password in 3 Minutes!

Encryption and passwords used in a PDF document are meant for protection, but they also cause trouble when we forget the password to it. So, can you open a PDF without knowing the password, and even remove the password? The answer is positive and this page covers 5 free and easy methods to open and unlock protected PDF documents, each as a stepwise instruction.

Chances are that a stronger or higher level of PDF encryption protects your PDF document, and in that case, some of the introduced solutions may not work, and you’ll have to go on and try another. Luckily, as the methods are easy to start, trying a bunch of times doesn’t seem to be a problem. Now, let’s look at the 5 best ways to unlock and view PDFs without a password!

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How to Unlock PDF Without Password Offline Using PDFgear Desktop

One of the most reliable ways of removing passwords from PDFs without knowing the password is using a PDF password remover (especially if you protected it with another software), and PDFgear Desktop is the best free PDF password remover software as it helps to unlock PDFs with ease.

PDFgear offers a complete set of tools for editing PDFs, creating PDFs, and setting up PDFs, and the best part of PDFgear Desktop software is that it removes passwords from PDFs offline, so you don’t have to upload them to the internet.

Now hit the Download button below to get PDFgear Desktop on your Windows or Mac computer and give it a try!

Step 1. Open PDF Password Remover

When the PDFgear Desktop software is fully installed, launch it on your Windows or Mac computer.

Step 2. Import Protected PDF to PDFgear

From PDFgear Desktop, hit the red Open File button from the upper side, to import the password-protected PDF document into the program.

Step 3. Unlock PDF in PDFgear

When the protected PDF is opened in PDFgear Desktop, go to the Protect tab, and hit the Remove button below, which allows you to permanently remove the password from the imported PDF.

Step 4. Save PDF as Unprotected

When you’ve removed the password for the imported PDF document, hit the Save button from the upper-left corner to save the new unprotected PDF on your local drive, without the password anymore.

How to Unlock PDF Without Password Offline Using Acrobat Reader

Adobe Acrobat, the industrial leader in viewing PDFs, is also competent in removing passwords from PDF documents. Since most PDF-related features such as PDF cropping, password removal, and adding comments to PDF are only available in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, you need the paid professional version of Acrobat in this part of the tutorial.

Compared with PDFgear Desktop, Acrobat can serve as another powerful and trustworthy PDF password remover software, as long as you don’t mind forking out for its premium membership.

The following shows you how to unlock PDF in Acrobat Pro, without a permissions password.

Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat Pro DC on your computer.

Step 2. Go to the File tab and open the password-protected PDF.

Step 3. Go to the File tab again from the upper-left side

Step 4. Hit Properties from the File dropdown menu.

Step 5. From the Document Properties window, go to Security Method, and change it from Password Security to Password Security.

How to Unlock PDF Without Password Online Using PDFgear

If you don’t mind uploading your protected PDF data to the internet, the online PDF unlockers are something you should also give a try.

Online PDF unlockers are web-based applications that allow you to unlock your PDF documents over the web. They function like local applications, yet everything happens in the cloud, and all you need is a web browser. With them, you can facilely remove passwords from PDFs on computers and mobile phones, without software installation.

The following are the steps to unlock PDF using the best free online PDF password remover, PDFgear.

Step 1. Use a web browser on your computer or mobile phone to navigate to the PDFgear Unlock PDF tool: https://www.pdfgear.com/unlock-pdf/

Step 2. Hit the Choose files button or drag and drop the file to import the PDF that is protected by a password.

Step 3. Wait for a few seconds, and PDFgear.com will automatically start the decryption. The unprotected PDF document should be available for download in a matter of seconds.

How to Unlock PDF Without Password Offline Using Google Chrome

In recent years, the browser application Google Chrome has been added with a practical PDF viewing feature for users to browse and view PDFs in Chrome, like they would in a PDF viewer application like Acrobat.

On the flip side, some PDF documents protected with softer levels of passwords can be directly opened in Google Chrome, and printed to a new PDF document without a password. So in this part, you’ll see how the Google Chrome browser works as a password remover.

Step 1. Open Google Chrome on your computer, and its window opens.

Step 2. Find the protected PDF document on your computer, and drag and drop the PDF into the window of Google Chrome.

Step 3. When the PDF is opened in Chrome, here you can freely copy the text on the protected PDF.

Step 4. Hit the Printer button from the upper-right corner, which allows you to Print the protected PDF to a plain PDF document.

Step 5. You can either go with Microsoft Print to PDF or Save as PDF, and hit Save when the decision is made.

How to Unlock PDF Without Password Online Using Google Drive

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage used these days, and it helps you freely store videos, images, and documents over the web, and can be easily accessed using your Google account.

By opening the PDF document in Google Drive, you get to unlock certain soft-protected PDFs without knowing the password and print the document to a password-free PDF format, and the following steps show you how to do so.

Step 1. Open Chrome browser on your computer, and make sure you’ve logged into your Google account. You can also use the Google Drive app on mobile phones.

Step 2. Go to Google Drive > My Drive, and find and open the protected PDF from a Google Drive folder.

Step 3. From the PDF preview screen, go and click the Print button from the upper-right corner.

Step 4. From the Print settings, click the Change button from Destination and set it as Save as PDF. This will print your opened PDF as a PDF document without a password.

How to Unlock PDF Without Password: FAQs

How to open a protected PDF when I forgot the PDF password?

If you forget the password to your PDF document, you can not directly open the PDF for editing or viewing. In that case, you need to first unlock the PDF document.

What’s the best PDF password remover online?

The best online PDF password remover tool is PDFgear. With the online PDFgear PDF Unlocker, users can unlock PDFs and remove passwords from PDFs without passwords.

What’s the best strongly encrypted PDF password remover?

A strong password remover is needed when your PDF is strongly protected. And the best strongly encrypted PDF password remover is the password remover software PDFgear Desktop for Windows and Mac.

The Bottom Line

These 5 methods are the best possible methods to unlock PDFs without knowing a password, according to our user feedback and testing results, so make sure to give them a go.

As mentioned, the introduced methods don’t guarantee to work so you may have to be a little more patient to try multiple methods until you find the working option, and good luck with that! And if you have questions or issues in this regard, please leave us a message in the comment section below and let us know.