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I would like to share a PDF file on a forum anonymously. When I right click on file and go to 'Details' tab, it shows my computer name and owner name. How do I remove (hide) this information?

8 Answers 8

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Those details exist for files other than PDFs. The Owner and Computer details you wish to remove are used for permissioning and only exist on your local computer. When you share that file elsewhere, the details will not be in the file.

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    @Gareth: There may still be the Author field filled into the metadata of the PDF file itself, which may leak the same info @Prostak is trying to keep private. Aug 8, 2011 at 20:03
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    @Prostak: you should also check the Document Properties... menu item which is is available from right-clicking into any of he PDF's pages when opened in Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro... Aug 8, 2011 at 20:04
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    This answer is wrong, author and creator tags will be still in the pdf file on other devices. Jun 11, 2021 at 14:19
  • @Jens: Assuming you are right, do you happen to know of any way to achieve it? Jan 15, 2022 at 21:42
  • @MichaelBeijer the answer I upvoted is : superuser.com/a/1013994 Jan 17, 2022 at 15:17
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If you want to remove attributes and metadata from a PDF without using additional programs, you can open the PDF with Google Chrome, click print, and then select the Save As PDF setting from Chrome. Save the PDF and you'll see the data cleared when you go to File -> Properties in a PDF that was previously protected.

enter image description here

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  • It works, but the size of the PDF file sometimes increases. Nov 20, 2016 at 20:59
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Sometimes, Adobe PDFs are strange in that none of your "properties" tab based advice worked, as least as far as removing names from a Comment box. They seem to do incremental or one-place only author name removals. If you like to comment in documents, then make the first comment, so that the comment box will pop-up. Then, remove the author's or login name and select "Make Current Properties Default" so that the remaining comment boxes also don't show the author's names.

Unfortunately, you'll need to follow the other advice on this page to remove the overall author's name, like going to Property tabs.

Very annoying.

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I'm going to assume you're using Windows. If you right click and choose "properties" on the .pdf, then choose the "details" tab there is an option to "Remove Properties and Personal Information". You can choose what to remove, either some or all of the properties. enter image description here

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    I wasn't able to remove 'Owner' and 'Computer' information when I followed your steps.
    – Prostak
    Apr 25, 2011 at 23:03
  • @Prostak, see Gareth's answer above.
    – tombull89
    Apr 26, 2011 at 7:24
  • The "Remove Properties and Personal Information" feature is not enough when dealing with PDF files. The problem is not the 'Owner' and 'Computer' informations (don't care about those ones, read Gareth's answer), but the 'Title', 'Author', 'Subject', 'Keywords' fields that you can see inside your PDF Reader.
    – Kar.ma
    Jan 2, 2017 at 11:23
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I made it!!! Just go the document Word version, click save as, then before select "pdf" under "Save as type:", delete all is in the field "Authors:" and also click on "options" button on this window and deselect in the pop up window the "document properties" and "document structure tags for accessibility". Then click "ok" and "Save". Ta da!:)

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I downloaded exiftool from (https://exiftool.org/) then you can run it specifically for any file you want to remove all metadata. Here is the command from Windows

exiftool -all= example.pdf
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I use Foxit Phantom PDF Business

Per the manual for Foxit Phantom Business, version 7.3, page 240 of 311 in the PDF (numbered page 239)

Remove Hidden Data

Foxit PhantomPDF supports to sanitize documents by removing the hidden information that is private or sensitive for users from their PDFs, generally including metadata, embedded content and attached files, scripts, etc.

You can remove hidden data from a PDF by one-click, please go to PROTECT > Hidden Data > Sanitize Document

. . . In my case, 7 PDFs went from a total of 109.0 MB to 56.5 MB. There was just a little highlighting done in one of the PDFs.

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  • It sounds like great software, but I don't think it actually addresses the specific question from the OP. The officially accepted answer explains that those two fields (Owner and Computer) are volatile, and as a result they will change to effectively protect their privacy.
    – Run5k
    Feb 8, 2017 at 1:20
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If you are saving a file as pdf using MS Word, then there is an option to remove the author's name when you save it. See the pic below for reference 1

Click on the author tab and remove it.

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