Redacting PDF Document

Redacting allows you to permanently hide private or sensitive information in a PDF document. The redacted parts appear as colored boxes instead of the original information. Redacting is helpful if you want to publish a document but don’t want to or cannot disclose certain parts of it for some reason.

IMPORTANT: Redacting a PDF document permanently removes the redacted data from the document, so make sure to save the redacted PDF under a different file name than the original document, otherwise the redacted data will be lost.

To redact a documentt, use one of the options below:

• Select Document > Redaction in the main menu.
• Use the Redaction toolbar.

You can select objects for redacting in two ways:

• Click the Mark for Redaction button on the toolbar (or select Document > Redaction > Mark for Redaction).
• Click the Search and Redact button on the toolbar (or select Document > Redaction > Search and Redact menu).

Marking Objects for Redaction

To redact objects by marking:

1. Click the Mark for Redaction button on the toolbar or select Document > Redaction > Mark for Redaction. The mouse cursor changes to a cross.
2. Click and drag over the areas or objects that you want to redact.



For better visibility of sensitive data when redacting a document, you can enable all object borders to show in the document. To do it, click Show Borders in the message which will appear after selecting the Mark for Redaction tool.



To always show object borders when using the Redact tool, go to Tools > Settings > Redaction and enable Show object borders by default.

3. After marking objects for redaction, click the Apply Redactions button on the toolbar, or select Document > Redaction > Apply Redactions to redact the selected blocks.

Redacting PDF by Certain Keywords

When you need to redact the same text in multiple places across the document, use the Search and Redact tool.

To redact a PDF by keywords:

1. Click the Search and Redact button on the toolbar or select Document > Redaction > Search and Redact. The Search tab will open on the left side of the window.
2. Type the keywords or phrases you want to find and select the results you wish to redact. You can review each result in the document by clicking it in the list.



3. Click the Mark Checked Results for Redaction button. This will mark all results for redaction in the document.



4. Now click the Apply Redactions button on the toolbar, or select Document > Redaction > Apply Redactions to redact the selected blocks.

Configuring Redaction Properties

To configure how the redacted fragments should look like, go to Document > Redaction > Redaction Properties or Tools > Settings > Redaction.

The following properties are available:

• Redacted Area Fill Color. Specifies the default color to fill the redacted area blocks.
• Show object borders by default. Shows borders of all objects by default to redact them more accurately.
• Show hint in message bar to toggle object borders. If enabled, shows a message suggesting to display object borders.
• Use Overlay Text. This option puts a specified text over each redacted block. You can specify Font, Size, Color and alignment of the text.
• Auto-size text. Automatically adjust the size of the overlay text to the size of the redacted area.
• Repeat Overlay Text. This option will fill the entire redacted area with the specified text repeated multiple times.

Also, you can adjust settings of each individual redaction area.

1. Click the Edit Document  button on the toolbar or use the Tools > Edit Document menu or press Alt+1.
2. Click the redacted area you want to adjust. Object Inspector will open:

Here you can configure how the redaction area looks:

• Geometry allows specifying the exact position and size of the selected redaction area.
• Style allows adjusting fill color and opacity, and stroke color, opacity and line width.
• Matrix specifies coefficients for matrix transformation.
• Clipping path is described here.
• Layer allows configuring the visibility of the selected redaction area.

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