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PDF Attachments

List, extract, add or remove embedded files. Free, and runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, stored or sent to a server.

About PDF Attachments

A PDF can carry other files inside it: the spreadsheet behind a report, a signed XML invoice, a dataset, anything at all. Readers show them in an attachments or paperclip pane, which most people never open — so a document can travel for years with a working file nobody knew was in it.

Listing is therefore the most useful thing here, and it changes nothing. Before a document is published or sent outside an organisation, it is worth knowing whether it is carrying its own source material. Extracting pulls everything out as a ZIP and leaves the PDF alone; removing rewrites the name tree so no pane appears at all.

Adding is the other direction, and it is what makes a PDF a container: an invoice with its machine-readable XML inside it, a report with the data it was built from. Anything that must travel with the document and must not be a second file in the email.

Where it helps

  • Lists what is embedded without touching the file, which is the check worth doing before publishing.
  • Extracts everything as a ZIP and as individual downloads.
  • Adds a file with a description, the way a reader's attachment pane expects.
  • Removes named attachments or all of them, rewriting the name tree rather than leaving an empty pane.
  • The document never leaves your browser — which matters, since an embedded file is usually the sensitive part.

Limits

  • Attachments in the older per-page form — a paperclip annotation pinned to a spot on a page — are not listed here; those are annotations.
  • Adding is one file at a time.
  • 20 MB is the ceiling for a single attachment, which is already more than belongs inside a PDF.
  • A reader without an attachments pane will not surface an embedded file at all, so it can be missed entirely.
  • Password-protected files must be unlocked first.

Frequently asked questions

Where do attachments show up?

In a reader's attachments or paperclip pane — Acrobat, Preview and most desktop readers have one. Browsers' built-in PDF viewers usually do not, which is why an embedded file can go unnoticed for years.

Is extracting safe?

Extracting copies the bytes out; the PDF is unchanged. What the extracted files themselves are is another question — an embedded file is just a file, and one from an untrusted document deserves the same caution as any attachment.

Does removing an attachment really delete it?

The entry is removed and the document is rewritten from the objects that remain, so the file is not carried into the saved output. As with any PDF edit, keep the original if you need it back.

Why attach a file rather than send two?

Because they stay together. An invoice with its structured XML inside it, or a report with its data, cannot be separated by forwarding, filing or downloading — which is exactly what happens to a second attachment in an email.

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