Remove Document Elements

This dialog box appears with the selection of document elements when inspecting document elements to remove.

Table 1. Document elements categories

Figure 1. Bookmarks
Bookmarks icon

Bookmarks are links referring to specific pages of a PDF document. You can view all bookmarks of a PDF document in the Bookmarks panel. Bookmarks usually indicate the document structure, but may also include sensitive words and phrases.

Figure 2. Comments
Comments
Comments usually refer to text markups and show the opinions of the author or reviewers. View all comments in the Comments panel (click the tool on the left of the View bar). Comments include notes, markups, drawing objects as well as file and sound attachments. Attachments added through the Attachments panel are not removed by this choice.
Figure 3. Document Attachments
Document Attachments
Document-level attachments are files (both PDF and other formats) added to a PDF document as reference or related data. View all attachments in the Attachments panel (click the tool on the left of the View bar). Attachments added as comments are not removed by this choice.
Deleted content Deleted parts (pages, text, images, cropped items) are not always actually removed from the PDF, they are just invisible. They could be restored by curious parties.
Destinations You can place an icon in your PDF file and link it to an external file. When the icon is clicked, the file is opened. You can view destinations in the Destinations panel (click the Destinations tool in the Panel bar). In general destination files will not open if the PDF is distributed.
Embedded thumbnails Thumbnails are miniature PDF pages often embedded in a PDF document. View page thumbnails in the Pages panel (click the Pages tool in the Panel bar).
Figure 4. Form fields and actions
Form fields and actions
Form fields in a PDF document are dynamic controls that contain interactive features. If this item is removed, all form fields are flattened and cannot be edited, filled in, or signed any more. (View form fields in the Form Control panel (click the Form Control tool in the Panel bar).
Figure 5. All JavaScript
All JavaScript

JavaScripts are active components that perform commands or actions under specified conditions. If this item is removed, all JavaScripts will turn inactive.

Links Links lead to some specific targets or actions. If you remove this item, the link texts or objects remain but the PDF not longer contains links.
Metadata Metadata include information about the PDF document such as author, subject, keywords, date, copyright information, etc. Metadata can be searched by PDF search utilities.
Embedded non-display data

This removes internal data not covered by metadata that is not normally visible, but can be viewed with PDF tools. This removes an embedded index, which may contain text that was subsequently redacted.

Note You can also specify the Remove Document Elements dialog box to appear whenever a document is closed, or whenever it is attached to an e-mail. Do this under File > Options > Document. By default these choices are disabled.

For more information, see Remove document elements.