What this tool does (and what it doesn't)
Most banks in India, and a growing number elsewhere, email statements as password-protected PDFs. The password is usually a deterministic combination of your personal details — date of birth, customer ID, PAN number, or the first few characters of your name in upper case. That makes opening one statement annoying. It makes opening twenty (e.g. for the financial year) genuinely painful.
This tool takes a PDF + the correct password and writes out an identical PDF with the encryption layer removed. Pages, text, images, and tagged structure stay byte-equivalent where the encryption allows. We don't crack passwords — if you don't know it, this tool won't help. What it does do: save you the next 30 minutes of right-click → properties → re-enter password every time you want to open the file in Excel, a converter, or your accounting software.
Once the PDF is unlocked, drop it straight into our bank statement converter to get CSV, Excel, QuickBooks, Xero or Sage output — fully reconciled — in about 30 seconds.
Common bank PDF password formats (cheat sheet)
If you've lost the email with the password, this is what the major banks use. Always check your bank's most recent statement footer, as formats change.
| Bank | Typical password format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| HDFC Bank | First 4 letters of name (UPPER) + DDMM of DOB | RAHU0205 |
| ICICI Bank | First 4 letters of name (lowercase) + DDMM of DOB | rahu0205 |
| State Bank of India | Account number + DDMMYYYY of DOB | 0000123456702051992 |
| Axis Bank | First 4 letters of name (UPPER) + DDMM of DOB | RAHU0205 |
| Kotak Mahindra | First 4 letters of name (UPPER) + Last 4 of account | RAHU7821 |
| PNB | Customer ID | 12345678 |
| Bank of Baroda | Account number | 12345678901 |
| Yes Bank | First 4 of customer ID + DDMM of DOB | 12340205 |
| American Express | Last 5 of card number | 12345 |
| Citi India | DDMMYYYY of DOB | 02051992 |
For a deeper walkthrough of password recovery — including what to do when none of the standard formats work — see our guide on unlocking password-protected bank statements.
Is this safe? How does browser-side decryption actually work?
The tool loads a small open-source library (pdf-lib) into your browser, hands it the file bytes and your password, and asks it to write out the same document without the encryption marker. Nothing in that chain involves our servers. Look at your browser's network tab as you use the tool — there are no upload requests after the initial page load. We can't see your PDF and we can't see your password.
That's the strongest privacy guarantee you can have with web tooling: the work runs on your machine. Compare that to most "free PDF unlocker" pages, which upload the PDF to a server you don't control, write it to a disk you can't audit, and email you a download link from an IP you've never heard of. Those tools work — but you've handed your bank statement to a stranger.
What if my PDF won't unlock?
There are four real possibilities:
- The password is wrong. The tool will tell you specifically that decryption failed. Re-read your bank's email — passwords are case-sensitive, and a surprising number of statements use mixed-case + digits.
- The PDF uses a non-standard encryption scheme. Most banks use AES-128. A few legacy or government-issued statements use formats pdf-lib doesn't read. If this happens, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat or Apple Preview, enter the password to view it, then File → Print → Save as PDF. The new file is unencrypted.
- The PDF has both an "open" password and a "permissions" password. Enter the open password — the one that's required to view the file.
- The file isn't actually encrypted. Sometimes a "password" prompt is a JavaScript dialog inside the PDF rather than encryption. Try opening it in a different PDF viewer; if it opens without a password, it was never encrypted to begin with.
After you unlock — convert your statement
Once the PDF is unlocked, you'll want to actually do something useful with it. That's where the rest of StatementEdge comes in. Our bank statement converter reads the unlocked PDF, extracts every transaction with locale-correct date and amount parsing, reconciles opening + closing balances, and writes out CSV, Excel (.xlsx), QuickBooks (.qbo), Xero CSV, Sage 50 CSV, or OFX. Free for 7 pages a day. Or run our statement validator first to see exactly what you're dealing with.