I have some sewing patterns that I would like to share (and hopefully swap) but all of the PDFs have a
“This was purchased by John Doe [email protected] #ordernumber - if you are not John Doe, please dob in the person you got this from to [email protected] so we can sick our lawyers on them”
sorta footer on every single page.
Obviously for privacy reasons (and because I don’t actually want lawyers sicked onto me), I need to remove this footer.
These are often complex PDFs with more than a hundred pages and multiple layers.
I managed to successfully remove the editing password (not user/viewing password, just can’t edit without password) with qpdf --decrypt. But removing that footer has left me at a dead end. I have even tried manually removing every single instance of those footers using Master PDF Editor but saving the file flattened it and you are no longer able to show/hide layers which is essential for correct printing. (Please don’t ask me how many different PDF editors I have tried because it has been so so SO many I have lost count).
Not that I really want to have to manually edit this out on what could amount to over a thousand pages but searching for a command to remove a certain phrase has come up empty. Even Master PDF Editor doesn’t seem to have a bulk remove or search and replace function (just search).
I use Linux btw.
You could do this with a PDF editor, then print to PDF so it’s a new file.
Or use a PDF to Word converter (or similar), which would enable removing such things. Though that can be tricky
I tried doing print to PDF but it flattened the resultant PDF so the layers were lost. Almost all of the software I used to try converting altered the PDF layout in some way and patterns must not change at all, otherwise they get messed up :/
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