Change User Password

This command changes the password which is also known as the open doc password. Have a look at some examples .

Usage

pdfcpu changeupw inFile upwOld upwNew [ outFile ] [flags]
pdfcpu changeupw inFile --upwold-file oldFile --upwnew-file newFile [ outFile ] [flags]

Common Flags

Arguments

name	description	required
inFile	PDF input file, use `-` to read from stdin	yes
upwOld	current user password	yes
upwNew	new user password	yes
outFile	PDF output file, use `-` to write to stdout	no

Both current passwords are authenticated before the change. Supply the current owner password with --opw or --opw-file; omitting it tries an empty password. The old positional password (or its file alternative) is the current user password being changed.

Password files

Use both --upwold-file and --upwnew-file together, omitting the positional old and new passwords. Use --opw-file to supply the other password from a file. Literal password strings remain supported. See Password files for newline handling, empty passwords and conflicts.

pdfcpu changeupw input.pdf --opw-file /run/secrets/opw \
  --upwold-file /run/secrets/old-password --upwnew-file /run/secrets/new-password output.pdf

The argument table above describes the literal-password form. An empty new-password file removes the password required to open the document.

Examples

You can set the user password either when you encrypt a file or later with changeupw.

Change the user password of a document that already has one:

$ pdfcpu encrypt enc.pdf --upw upw --opw opw
writing enc.pdf ...

$ pdfcpu changeupw enc.pdf upw upwNew
writing enc.pdf ...

Set the user password of a document that has none. Whenever you change the user password of a document you also have to provide the current owner password:

$ pdfcpu encrypt enc.pdf --opw opw
writing enc.pdf ...

$ pdfcpu changeupw enc.pdf "" upwNew
Please provide the owner password with --opw

$ pdfcpu changeupw enc.pdf "" upwNew --opw opw
writing enc.pdf ...

Change the user password for a streamed PDF and upload the result:

$ aws s3 cp s3://acme-legal/client.pdf - \
   | pdfcpu changeupw - --opw "$OPW" "$OLD_UPW" "$NEW_UPW" - \
   | aws s3 cp - s3://acme-legal/client-rotated-upw.pdf