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Bucket Mode · Guide

Bucket Mode: Sort PDFs by Password Automatically

6 min read · September 2026

Imagine you're in HR and you've just generated 200 salary slip PDFs — each one locked with the employee's date of birth as the password. You need to distribute the right slip to the right person, but opening each one to verify the name would take hours.

Bucket Mode was built for exactly this. Upload all 200 PDFs, provide the list of passwords, and in minutes you get a ZIP where each folder contains every PDF that opened with that password.

What makes Bucket Mode different from Bulk Unlock

Bulk UnlockMany PDFs, one password. All files use the same password.
Bucket ModeMany PDFs, many passwords. Files are sorted by which password opens them.

Step-by-step: Using Bucket Mode

1
Open Bucket ModeGo to pdfunlock.tech and click Buckets in the top navigation, or go directly to pdfunlock.tech/buckets.
2
Upload all your PDFsDrag and drop all password-protected PDFs at once. There's no need to sort or organise them beforehand.
3
Enter your password listType all possible passwords, one per line. For salary slips, this might be a list of employee dates of birth like 01011990, 15081985, etc.
4
Run Bucket ModePDFUnlock tries every password against every file in your browser. No data is sent to any server.
5
Download your sorted ZIPThe ZIP contains one folder per password (the 'bucket'). Every PDF that opened with password X is in the X folder. Unmatched files go into a separate folder.

Real-world use cases

  • HR & Payroll: Sort employee salary slips by employee (each locked with their personal DOB)
  • CA firms: Batch process client Form 26AS downloads locked with PAN-based passwords
  • Banks & NBFCs: Sort customer statement PDFs by account number
  • Legal teams: Organise case document bundles with different access passwords per party

Frequently asked questions

What is Bucket Mode in PDFUnlock?

Bucket Mode is a feature that unlocks PDFs with different passwords and automatically sorts them into folders based on which password opened each file. The output is a ZIP with one folder per password — called a 'bucket'.

Who uses Bucket Mode?

HR teams and payroll managers use it most. Payroll software often generates salary slips locked with each employee's date of birth. Instead of opening each slip manually, HR teams upload all of them to Bucket Mode and get them sorted automatically.

How many passwords can I enter in Bucket Mode?

You can enter as many passwords as you need, one per line. The Pro plan supports unlimited passwords and up to 200 files per session.

What happens to PDFs that no password can open?

PDFs that couldn't be opened by any provided password are placed in an 'unmatched' folder in the ZIP so you can identify and handle them separately.

Try Bucket Mode — only on PDFUnlock

Open Bucket Mode — Free