How to Close Your PDF with doc.close() in PyMuPDF

doc.close() closes a PDF document that you previously opened with PyMuPDF.

What does doc.close() do?

doc.close():

• Releases resources and memory associated with the document.
• Closes the document and its underlying resources.
• Makes the Document object unavailable for further document operations.

When should you use it?

Use doc.close() when you are finished working with a PDF, especially when:

• You created or modified a PDF.
• You are processing many PDFs in a loop.
• You want to make sure the document is no longer being held open.

Important: After calling doc.close(), you can no longer work with the document. Attempting to perform operations on a closed document can raise: ValueError: document closed

If you need to work with the PDF again, you can open it with pymupdf.open():

This creates a new Document object that you can work with normally.

Should you save the PDF document before closing it?

If you've modified the PDF, make sure you save your changes to a new file before closing the document.

For example:

If you close a modified document without saving it, your changes may be lost.

doc.close() does not save your changes.

Open the notebook

Open the Google Colab notebook for this PDF mini-guide and run the code as you follow along.

[Open in Google Colab]

If you found this mini-guide useful, continue with our interactive beginner cheatsheet and explore more Python PDF foundations.

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More PDF Python Resources

Want to learn how to open a PDF file?

Check out this mini-guide: Open Your First PDF with PyMuPDF.