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I realize most PDF documents are locked for a reason, but I spend several hours a week editing datasheets provided directly from my vendors to be sent to customers. Obviously it's very annoying and somewhat of a show-stopper when I download a datasheet in PDF format, then I am not able to draw boxes, add comments, or draw arrows to the supplied product.

One of our vendors told us the way around that was to print a physical copy, then scan it in as a PDF - not the most technological or aesthetically pleasing solution I have found.

I at least would like to be able to print the PDF to another PDF so that the new copy is unlocked for editing. Is there any way around this?

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The vendor is certainly wrong: certainly it's better to take screenshots of every page. Still annoying of course. – reinierpost Nov 23 at 17:48

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There is a piece of software called PDF reDirect that allows you to create PDF documents from just about any program that can print. The software installs a printer called "PDF reDirect" on your computer and when you want to use the software you print the document to that printer. Perhaps you can print the document to that software and then you can resave it after that without the DRM.

I have never tried this before, just a thought.

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BTW it's not the only PDF printer driver out there, other examples I've used are PDF Creator and CutePDF, and the one from Adobe Acrobat. – reinierpost Nov 23 at 17:47
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while this is an option, it doesn't always work. the PDF permissions can prevent users from printing the document. – Molly Nov 23 at 17:52
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I know this might not the solution you're looking for, but I'll try my luck...Okular has the option to ignore any DRM-Settings of a PDF-File.

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Interesting, I hadn't heard of this before. How does this PDF reader compare to some of the other free ones out there? I just downloaded PDF-Xchange Viewer and I love it so far, but the free version is limited and still cannot unlock pages. – NoCatharsis Nov 23 at 15:35
I have to say that I have no idea. ;) It is part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE, available for Windows too, by the way) so it must be something good. – Bobby Nov 23 at 15:37
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The Problem with a re-printing the document to PDF is that the protected document may be printing restricted. So I guess the PDF printer route would work only for documents that aren't print protected already.

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Assuming the document isn't protected against printing (in which case the print-and-scan method wouldn't work either), you can use any of the pdf converter programs that work by pretending to be a printer.

The two I've used are
  CutePDF: http://www.cutepdf.com/
  PDFCreator: http://en.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator

Of those, I prefer CutePDF - it's much faster.

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Well we have Acrobat 8.0 Standard at work, which has the Distiller to print docs in PDF format. I've found that generally the printed file still is locked against editing (though sometimes this does work). – NoCatharsis Nov 24 at 3:40
Well naturally Adobe's own product will preserve the lock setting. Third-party pdf writers, on the other hand, probably won't (perhaps can't) preserve/reproduce meta information like that. However, I don't have a locked pdf to try this with, so I can't say for sure. – Martha Nov 24 at 14:53
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Sorry to take the Accepted Answer checkmark away from ya, but I found the best solution in this eHow article. I downloaded the FreewarePDFUnlocker.msi file it mentions (I did check for viruses, everything was good), followed the simple instructions, and it worked perfectly.

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