Edit PDF Metadata

How to edit PDF metadata

1. Drop a PDF file on the drop zone, or click it to choose one. Current metadata lists every entry stored in the file, and whether it has an XMP packet. Click Show the XMP packet to read it.
2. Under New values, edit the Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator and Producer. Leave a field empty to remove that entry.
3. Adjust the Creation date and Modification date. With Set to the current date and time when saving ticked, the modification date becomes the moment you save.
4. Tick Show the title instead of the file name in the reader’s title bar if you want readers to display the title.
5. Choose what happens to the XMP metadata, then click Save metadata and Download. To clean the file instead, click Remove all metadata.

What PDF metadata is

A PDF can describe itself in two places. The older one is the document information dictionary, a short list of entries: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator (the application the original was made with, such as a word processor), Producer (the software that wrote the PDF), CreationDate and ModDate. It’s what you see under “Document properties” in most readers.

The newer one is an XMP packet, an XML block attached to the document. PDF 2.0 prefers it, PDF/A archives require it, and Adobe Acrobat shows its values first. When a file carries both and they disagree, different readers show different titles. That’s why Write these values to XMP too (recommended) is selected by default: the tool writes a fresh XMP packet with the same values as the information dictionary. If the file is a PDF/A or PDF/UA document, its identification (part and conformance level) is carried over so it still declares itself as such. Other XMP data, such as custom schemas added by a publishing system, isn’t kept in the rewritten packet; choose Leave XMP unchanged if you need it.

Entries other than the eight standard ones (for example “Company” or “SourceModified”, added by some office suites) are listed and kept when you save.

Why edit or remove metadata

The title is what search engines show for a PDF on the web and what many readers display in the tab or window title, so “Microsoft Word - draft_v7_FINAL.docx” is worth replacing. Keywords and subject help document management systems classify files.

Metadata can also reveal more than you intend: the author’s name or user account, the software and version used, the real creation date. Before publishing a document or sending it outside your organization, Remove all metadata deletes:

• the whole document information dictionary, custom entries included;
• every XMP packet in the file: the document’s, and those attached to pages, images or fonts;
• private application data (PieceInfo) left by programs like Illustrator.

The file is rewritten from scratch, so older revisions kept by incremental saves disappear too. The tool can’t remove information that is part of the content: text, EXIF data inside embedded JPEG images, font names, or the file identifier that PDF readers use to recognize a document. pdf-lib doesn’t decode images, so strip photos before putting them in the PDF if their EXIF data matters.