How to batch remove Certified Signatures from PDFs

Report · Feb 29, 2016

I work at an engineering firm that is wishing to combine for our clients all the pdfs generated for their permit applications so they can view their permit applications on their Iphones. The problem that I am running into is that when I try to combine all the PDF's together, those that have been certified with a digital signature by the engineers are not capable of being combined into a single PDF unless I combine them using the PDF portfolio method. If I use the other method to combine the pdf's, the non portfolio method, the PDF's that have digital signatures of the engineers reads an error of "Certified documents cannot be merged".

I would use the PDF portfolio method however when that I view PDF portfolio on my IPHONE with the latest version of Adobe Acrobat app as of 2-29-16 the order of the pages gets all screwed up, and I generally find that I prefer the other method of combining all the PDFs into a signal file, not the portfolio method, because I have some other apps on my phone that also allow me to view them but will not allow me to view the PDF portfolio files.

So my question is how can I quickly, hopefully through some batch method, point adobe to a folder with a ton of sub-folders that contain PDF's, some of which are certified with a digital signature and some are not,

have the engineer enter in their password they used to apply the digital signature and it automatically go through all the files and remove certificated signature from the PDF's that contain them.

I have seen stuff about how to batch remove passwords when the password is known such as Removing Security from PDFs: Individually and in Batch‌ however I can not find any thing about how to batch remove certified/signed documents signatures when the password is known.

Would somebody please help me I have been looking for this, for about five days. I realize I could just re-plot to PDF the documents or save as a PS file, or word file etc. but the problem is each permit application contains over 200 PDF's of which at random some maybe 1/4 of them have been certified/digitally signed and any other method would be very, very time consuming. So I am really needing a batch process where that I can point adobe to look at a folder, have the engineer enter in their password they used to apply the digital signature and adobe automatically go through all the files and remove certificated signatures from the PDF's that contain them.

I am currently using Adobe Acrobat 10, but have access to a more recent version, but can not currently remember the version number.

Report · Mar 02, 2016

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think this can be done with Acrobat. You should ask the people submitting the files to you not to certify them...

Report · Mar 02, 2016

After hours of research I believe you to be right, I can't see any way to batch remove the signatures, I think they would need to be done one at a time. I will leave this thread open for awhile longer just to make sure that somebody out there doesn't know of an answer.

Report · Jun 02, 2016

This is the same thing I am running into. I need to organize and combine multiple PDF documents into 1 PDF, but it will not let me because of the signatures and or passwords. I can print them off, scan back into my computer, then combine the document, but I bought this program to bypass printing everything off and scanning into one file. Did you find a work around or a better program?