"This was purchased by John Doe john.doe@email.com #ordernumber - if you are not John Doe, please dob in the person you got this from to company@example.com so we can sick our lawyers on them"

sorta footer on every single page.

Obviously for privacy reasons (and because I don't actually want lawyers sicked onto me), I need to remove this footer.

These are often complex PDFs with more than a hundred pages and multiple layers.

I managed to successfully remove the editing password (not user/viewing password, just can't edit without password) with qpdf --decrypt. But removing that footer has left me at a dead end. I have even tried manually removing every single instance of those footers using Master PDF Editor but saving the file flattened it and you are no longer able to show/hide layers which is essential for correct printing. (Please don't ask me how many different PDF editors I have tried because it has been so so SO many I have lost count).

Not that I really want to have to manually edit this out on what could amount to over a thousand pages but searching for a command to remove a certain phrase has come up empty. Even Master PDF Editor doesn't seem to have a bulk remove or search and replace function (just search).

I use Linux btw.

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[–] mub@lemmy.ml 1 points 23 hours ago

Honestly there are so many ways pdfs can hold unique information that retaining the same format is probably not going to work.

The 2 options I suggest are . . .

Use a tool to extra the text into a plain text fromat then paste it into word along with screen shots of any images you need.
You could try converting each page to a JPG image using something like Gimp. You could then desaturate it or convert it to pure black and white so it reveals any hidden text which you can paint over. If you want the images in colour just crop them out from the original file and paste into the new b&w copy. This is a crap description but hopefully it makes the point.