Edit PDF Metadata
Inspect and correct the document properties a PDF carries — title, author, subject and keywords — then save the change. Read and written entirely on your device.
How to use Edit PDF Metadata
- Upload your PDF to load its current properties.
- Edit the title, author, subject and keywords.
- Click “Save metadata”.
- Download the updated PDF.
About Edit PDF Metadata
Every PDF carries a small information dictionary — title, author, subject, keywords, plus creation and modification dates — that almost nobody looks at and that is very often wrong. It is more visible than it seems. The title, not the filename, is what a reader shows in its window bar, and it is what many document management systems index and display in their search results; some mail clients and chat previews use it too. A document whose title reads “Microsoft Word - report_v3_FINAL_reallyfinal.docx” says something unfortunate about how it was made.
These values are usually inherited rather than chosen. Exporting from a word processor copies the template’s author, which is frequently a colleague who left two years ago or an internal account name such as jsmith-admin. The title is derived from the source filename unless somebody set one deliberately. Scanner software writes its own product name into everything it produces, and a file assembled from several sources keeps whichever set of properties the first one happened to carry. None of it is reviewed before a document is emailed, uploaded to a portal or published on a website, and all of it travels with the file.
That makes the author field a quiet disclosure risk worth checking before anything goes outside the organisation. It is also worth being precise about what this tool does and does not clear. It rewrites the four information fields and refreshes the modification date, leaving the pages themselves untouched. It does not strip an XMP metadata packet, which some producers write in parallel and some readers prefer, and it removes nothing embedded in the page content — hidden layers, review comments, cropped-away image data and text sitting under a black box all remain. This is tidying, not redaction.
For the ordinary case it takes seconds and makes a document look considered rather than forwarded. Give a report the title it should be filed under, put the organisation or the responsible person in the author field, use the subject line for a one-sentence description, and add comma-separated keywords if the file will land in a system that indexes them. Consistency pays off more than cleverness here: a shelf of documents whose titles all follow the same pattern is searchable in a way that a shelf of filenames never is. Everything is read from the file and written back inside this tab, so a document you would never upload can still be cleaned up before you send it on.
Frequently asked questions
Which fields can I change?
Title, author, subject and keywords, with the keyword list entered comma-separated. The modification date is refreshed automatically when you save; the creation date and the producing application are left as they were.
Does editing the properties alter the pages?
No. Only the document information entries are rewritten. Page content, images, fonts, form fields and annotations are copied through unchanged, so the file looks and prints exactly as it did before.
Is my document uploaded?
No. Properties are read out of the file and written back inside this tab, which is worth knowing given that the reason for editing them is often that they contain something you would rather not share. Sending a file away to have its author name removed rather defeats the exercise.
Does this remove all the hidden information from a PDF?
It does not, and no metadata editor should claim to. Cropped image data, hidden layers, review comments and text underneath a drawn black box live in the page content rather than in the properties. Genuine redaction is a separate and more careful job.
Why does my reader still show the old title?
Two common reasons. Some PDFs also carry an XMP metadata packet, which certain readers prefer over the information dictionary and which this tool leaves alone. Others simply cache what they indexed earlier — close and reopen the file, or clear the reader’s recent list.
Can I edit the properties of a password-protected PDF?
Not while it is encrypted. The document has to be opened with its password in a reader and saved without protection first, after which its properties can be read and rewritten normally.
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