Doc properties
How to Edit PDF Document Properties: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords
Document properties are stored inside the PDF file itself. You never see them on the page, but they travel with the file — into file managers, reader tabs, and whatever review system reads your upload.
What document properties are, and where to find them
Document properties (also called metadata) are a set of descriptive fields written into the file, occupying no space on the page. The common ones are Title, Author, Subject and Keywords; the file also records the creating application, the producing application and the created/modified dates.
To read them, open File → Properties / Document Properties in almost any PDF reader. Windows Explorer's Details tab and macOS Finder's Get Info also surface the Title and Author fields.
The four fields you can edit
| Field | What it does | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Shown on reader tabs and in file managers | Makes a file recognisable in a folder full of PDFs |
| Author | The document's author name | Replaced with an ID for blind review, or cleared to hide your OS username |
| Subject | A subtitle or one-line description | Adds detail the title cannot carry |
| Keywords | Comma-separated words | Improves local search when archiving |
Keywords are separated by commas, for example contract, 2026, archive. The exported file gets a -props suffix and your original file is untouched.
The important part: a blank field keeps the old value
This is the part people get wrong. The tool only writes fields you actually fill in. Leave an input empty and that property keeps whatever the file already had.
So if Author says "John Smith" and you clear the input before exporting, the new file still says John Smith. To genuinely remove the value you need the Clean Private Data tool.
| What you want | Which tool |
|---|---|
| Change Title / Author to a new value | Edit Doc Properties (this article) |
| Keep the properties, drop comments/scripts/form data | Clean Private Data, with "keep document properties" ticked |
| Delete title, author, dates — all of it | Clean Private Data (default setting) |
Common situations
- Blind review: submission systems read the Author field, so a real name in metadata defeats the point of anonymising the manuscript.
- Files exported from Word: Author is usually your OS username — worth changing before you send it.
- Archiving: a consistent Title and Keywords make local search far more reliable.
Does editing properties touch the page content?
No. The tool reads the file, changes only those metadata fields and saves it again. Page content, the text layer, images and page count are untouched — the result is still searchable and copyable.
One caveat: tools that rebuild the page structure (fixed size, merge, split, compress) recreate the file, and the document properties go with it. If you need both a new page size and new properties, resize first and edit the properties last.
Is the file uploaded?
No. Everything runs locally in your browser — the file never leaves your device, and it works offline.