Removing all MetaData from PDF files

Started by craisin, February 21, 2012, 11:29:54 AM

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suddenfear1

Sorry, I have to make a comment on this.  You say that ExifTool supports PDF on the front page of your website.  "PDF   R/W   Adobe Portable Document Format   R3   R3   R/W/C   R3   R/W/C PDF, R Photoshop", which is listed under files supported.  But your program doesn't support PDF.  You can't even remove the metadata.  I was only alerted to this because I happened to be reading documentation in the Known Problems section, and I noticed one sentence without any explanation - "PDF - The original metadata is never actually removed."  I then had to do a web search to find this entry on the forum.  That is despicable, and you should clearly indicate on the front page of your site that your program is NOT suitable for editing PDFs. 

Phil Harvey

#46
ExifTool does edit PDF metadata, but it uses the incremental update technique.  Read more about this here.

Since you seem to be very concerned about the removal of existing metadata from PDF's, you should be aware that ExifTool gives this warning when you try to remove all metadata:

> exiftool -all= a.pdf
Warning: [minor] ExifTool PDF edits are reversible. Deleted tags may be recovered! - a.pdf


- Phil

Edit: I have added a note to this effect in the Supported File Types table on the home page.
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

StarGeek

* Did you read FAQ #3 and use the command listed there?
* Please use the Code button for exiftool code/output.
 
* Please include your OS, Exiftool version, and type of file you're processing (MP4, JPG, etc).