Sanitize PDF
Removes the parts of a document that can act on their own: scripts, actions that fire when the file is opened, launch and form-submission actions, and embedded attachments. The visible page content is left exactly as it was.
Drop your file here
PDF · up to 100 MB each · you can also paste from the clipboard
Nothing is processed until you press the button below.
How this tool works
- 1The document catalogue is checked for an open action, additional actions and a name tree holding scripts or attachments.
- 2Every page and every annotation is walked for actions of type JavaScript, Launch, SubmitForm or ImportData.
- 3Anything found is deleted and counted, so the result tells you exactly what was removed.
What it will not do
- This removes active content, not visible content. It is not redaction and will not remove anything you can see on the page.
- External hyperlinks are left alone unless you ask for them to go, because a link is content rather than code.
- It cannot inspect an encrypted document, which has to be unlocked first.
Common uses
- Cleaning a PDF that arrived by email before circulating it internally.
- Removing an attachment someone embedded in a document without noticing.
Where this runs
Sanitize PDF runs entirely inside this page. Your file is read by the browser, processed in memory and handed back to your downloads folder. It is never sent to a server, because there is no server involved in this tool.
Read the full processing model →Questions
It removes the common active-content vectors and tells you what it found. It is not a substitute for a virus scanner, and a document exploiting a flaw in a specific reader's parser would not be caught by it.