"PDF File has not been decrypted" issue still persists in PyPDF2

Question

Getting the following errors while reading PDF files using PyPDF2

raise utils.PdfReadError("File has not been decrypted")
PdfReadError: File has not been decrypted

I have been trying to read PDF documents programmatically through python. For most of the PDF files it works fine but for few I get the following error

raise utils.PdfReadError("File has not been decrypted")
PdfReadError: File has not been decrypted

I have already tried solutions from another stackoverflow solution: PyPDF 2 Decrypt Not Working

This solution from above question still did not solve my issue

import os
import PyPDF2
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader

fp = open(filename)
pdfFile = PdfFileReader(fp)
if pdfFile.isEncrypted:
   try:
       pdfFile.decrypt('')
       print('File Decrypted (PyPDF2)')
   except:
       command = ("cp "+ filename +
        " temp.pdf; qpdf --password='' --decrypt temp.pdf " + filename
        + "; rm temp.pdf")
       os.system(command)
       print('File Decrypted (qpdf)')
       fp = open(filename)
       pdfFile = PdfFileReader(fp)
else:
    print('File Not Encrypted')

The issue does not seems to be space between file names or setting password as ' '.

Somehow not able to solve this error. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

My code:

import PyPDF2
import os
from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join

mypath='D:/POC PDF'
onlyfiles = [os.path.join(mypath, f) for f in os.listdir(mypath) if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(mypath, f))]
for file in onlyfiles:
    fileReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(open(file,'rb'))
    countpage = fileReader.getNumPages()
    print(countpage)

Could you share one of the offending files? – xilopaint Feb 17 '19 at 06:02 — xilopaint, Feb 17 '19 at 06:02

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '19 at 11:10

4

To answer my own question:Thanks to a friend of mine, I found a better package than PyPDF2. It is PyMuPDF. Here is a sample implementation

import fitz

def extractText(file): 
    doc = fitz.open(file) 
    text = []
    for page in doc: 
        t = page.getText().encode("utf8") 
        text.append(t)
    return text

answered Feb 19 '19 at 11:10

venkatttaknev

669
1
7
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how do I use this function to open a pdf web link: E.g: https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.datacamp.com/blog_assets/Numpy_Python_Cheat_Sheet.pdf – Mikee Mar 20 '19 at 14:27
@user1783739 you may have to use 'from bs4 import BeautifulSoup, SoupStrainer' – venkatttaknev Mar 28 '19 at 13:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 22 '21 at 10:13

Using the 'QPDF' library with the subprocess can decrypt the given PDF file.

Install:

sudo apt-get install -y qpdf

Usage:

new_file_path = file_path.replace('.pdf','_decrypt.pdf').replace('.PDF','_decrypt.pdf')
cmd = "qpdf --decrypt " + file_path + " " + new_file_path

proc = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
                        shell=True, preexec_fn=os.setsid)
stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()

"PDF File has not been decrypted" issue still persists in PyPDF2

2 Answers2