pdfdetach(1)                General Commands Manual               pdfdetach(1)



NAME
       pdfdetach  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) document embedded file ex-
       tractor (version 4.06)

SYNOPSIS
       pdfdetach [options] [PDF-file]

DESCRIPTION
       Pdfdetach lists or extracts embedded files (attachments) from a  Porta-
       ble Document Format (PDF) file.

CONFIGURATION FILE
       Pdfdetach  reads  a  configuration  file at startup.  It first tries to
       find the user's private config file, ~/.xpdfrc.  If that doesn't exist,
       it looks for a system-wide config file, typically /etc/xpdfrc (but this
       location can be changed when pdfinfo is built).  See the xpdfrc(5)  man
       page for details.

OPTIONS
       Some  of  the following options can be set with configuration file com-
       mands.  These are listed in square brackets with the description of the
       corresponding command line option.

       -list  List  all of the embedded files in the PDF file.  File names are
              converted to the text encoding specified by the "-enc" switch.

       -save number
              Save the specified embedded file.  By  default,  this  uses  the
              file  name  associated with the embedded file (as printed by the
              "-list" switch); the file name can  be  changed  with  the  "-o"
              switch.

       -saveall
              Save  all of the embedded files.  This uses the file names asso-
              ciated with the  embedded  files  (as  printed  by  the  "-list"
              switch).   By default, the files are saved in the current direc-
              tory; this can be changed with the "-o" switch.

       -o path
              Set the file name used when saving an  embedded  file  with  the
              "-save" switch, or the directory used by "-saveall".

       -enc encoding-name
              Sets  the encoding to use for text output (embedded file names).
              The encoding-name must be defined with  the  unicodeMap  command
              (see xpdfrc(5)).  This defaults to "Latin1" (which is a built-in
              encoding).  [config file: textEncoding]

       -opw password
              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
              will bypass all security restrictions.

       -upw password
              Specify the user password for the PDF file.

       -cfg config-file
              Read config-file in place of ~/.xpdfrc or the system-wide config
              file.

       -v     Print copyright and version information.

       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)

EXIT CODES
       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:

       0      No error.

       1      Error opening a PDF file.

       2      Error opening an output file.

       3      Error related to PDF permissions.

       98     Out of memory.

       99     Other error.

AUTHOR
       The pdfinfo software and documentation are copyright 1996-2025 Glyph  &
       Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       xpdf(1),   pdftops(1),  pdftotext(1),  pdftohtml(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdf-
       fonts(1), pdftoppm(1), pdftopng(1), pdfimages(1), xpdfrc(5)
       http://www.xpdfreader.com/



                                  14 Nov 2025                     pdfdetach(1)
