Hi,

What is the correct way to completely remove an indirect object from a PDF?

My specific problem is that I have an AcroForm field dictionary that contains an entry with key 'Metadata' which is an indirect stream object. However, I can find no way to delete the object so that it is completely removed from the PDF.

If the field dictionary is 'fieldDictionary', I can get the value of the 'Metadata' key with:

PdfTypeIndirect metadataObj = fieldDictionary.GetBy("Metadata") as PdfTypeIndirect;

I have tried calling:

metadataObj.Release();
metadataObj.Direct.Release();
PdfIndirectList.FromPdfDocument(pdfDoc).Remove(metadataObj.ObjectNumber);
fieldDictionary.Remove("Metadata");

and variations of the above, but nothing seems to work. When I save the PDF and look at its contents in a text editor the metadata object is always still present as an 'orphaned' unreferenced object. For our application we need to completely remove the object even though it is not referenced by any other object in the PDF.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Regards,
Terry.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I do save the PDF with the ‘NoIncremental’ flag.

I am just sending you an email with an example PDF attached and more details of the problem.

Many thanks for your help.

Best regards,
Terry.