There's a command-line tool called qpdf that can remove the password encryption from your PDF files, even in cases where Preview won't let you save a copy of or export the PDF.
Installing with Homebrew
- Install Homebrew if you haven't already.
Install qpdf on your system by typing the following in Terminal:
brew install qpdf
Installing with MacPorts
- Install MacPorts if you haven't already.
Install qpdf on your system by typing the following in Terminal:
sudo port install qpdf
Usage
Once qpdf is installed, use it to decrypt the file by typing the following in Terminal:
qpdf --decrypt --password=xxxxx encrypted-filename.pdf decrypted-filename.pdf
You can then open decrypted-filename.pdf
in Preview to verify that it worked!