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Creating a Non-Searchable PDF from Office Documents

By Rick Borstein

Every once in a while, I receive an email that has me scratching my head a bit, such as this one:

When you PDF a document that you generate in MS Word, is there a way to produce an "image-only" PDF, with non-searchable text? The only way I know how is to print out and scan the document back into Acrobat.

Why would someone want to take a perfectly good, fully-searchable document and turn it into an image-only PDF which is just a picture of the page in a PDF wrapper?

The answer is that in the course of vigorously defending a client, some firms desire to make using documents as difficult as possible for the other side.

Of the various PDF flavors , an image-only PDF is . . .

• 3 to 5 times larger in file size
• Look worse on screen
• Print slower
• Not searchable

"Dumbing down" a PDF to an image probably doesn't cripple the other side very much. Using OCR, the other side can quickly make the document searchable.

It is not without some trepidition that I share this tip. After all, compact, searchable PDF should be what we all aspire to create.

However, since I suspect that many firms are printing out documents and rescanning them, I want to offer a greener alternative.

It's not for me to comment on whether this is fair game or not as you work with the other side, but following is a workaround that will create an image-only, non-searchable PDF from an existing PDF document.

non-searchable PDF,locked down PDF,crippled PDF

Full post as published by Acrobat for Legal Professionals on April 15, 2008 (boomark / email).