Chrome: Copy content from locked PDF documents

The security settings for PDF documents often prevent you from copying content and pasting it into Word. The locked file contents can still be copied with a little trick. Avoid violating any copyrights, because a copy lock is rarely activated for no reason.

Locked PDF files: copy content

Use the Google Chrome browser to access PDF content, because it can not only display the content like other browsers, but also has its own PDF export option via the print function.

1. To access the file system of your computer, first write "file: /// C:" in the address line of Chrome and press the Enter key.
2. Then navigate through your database as on an FTP server, similar to Windows Explorer, and open the required PDF document with a double click. Alternatively, you can also drag and drop the file from Windows Explorer into the browser window. However, this does not change the copying ban, which persists in this view.
3. Therefore, now click on the menu icon and select the "Print" command.
4. Then click on "Change" in the "Target" area on the left, select the variant "Save as PDF", click on "Save" above it, navigate in the file dialog to the desired target folder and assign a name for the new file.
5. With a click on "Save" you have created a new identical PDF document without copy protection in no time.

• You can now view and edit this new file with any PDF tool. In Adobe Reader you can see the changed document restrictions with the command "File"> "Properties" in the "Security" tab. The method is also useful, for example, if you want to add comments to a protected PDF.

If this method is too difficult for you, you can remove the write protection with special software.