Redact PDF

A black rectangle drawn in a PDF editor only covers text: anyone can copy it out, search for it, or move the rectangle away. Redacting here removes what’s underneath first. Text under a box is deleted from the file, the pixels of a photo or scan under it are cleared, and a drawing that runs under it becomes a picture without the covered part.

Only what’s under the boxes goes. The rest of a line stays text you can select and search, and pictures beside a box keep every pixel.

Scanned documents work too: the scan’s pixels under each box are cleared, and its invisible text layer, which lets you search a scan, loses those words as well.

Type a name, an account number or any word and add it as a search: every place it appears, on every page, is marked before anything is removed, and you can see each one on the page. Add as many searches as you need.

Choose Whole words only so a search for “Ann” leaves “Annual” alone, and Match case to tell “May” from “may”. Areas you draw and searches work together in one go, and several PDFs can be redacted at once.

What a PDF hides can give away as much as what it shows. The redacted copy is a new PDF made from what the pages show, so attachments, scripts, XMP metadata, bookmarks, links and the values behind form fields never carry over, and hidden layers are removed rather than revealed. On a page cropped smaller than its paper, what lies outside the visible part is removed too.

Remove document details is on by default, so the title, author and other details go as well. Turn it off to keep them.

Redact checks that no text is left under a box, using the same PDF reader that removed it. Text in unusual fonts, such as drawn glyphs, can escape that check, so look over the redacted copy before you share it.

Form fields and comments keep their look on the page, but they become part of it and can’t be edited any more. To only hide part of a page without removing anything, use Crop PDF instead.