Redact a PDF

Redaction in the PDF editor removes what you mark from the exported PDF, so it cannot be read, selected or recovered from that file. The file you opened is not changed.

Mark areas to redact

Choose Redact and drag over the text or images to remove. Marked areas are shown dark with a red outline, and can be moved or deleted until you export.

Find and redact

More, then Find and redact, finds words or phrases (separate several with commas), email addresses, phone numbers or web addresses on every page. For words, you can match upper and lower case and whole words only. Each match is listed with its page and outlined in red on the page; choose a match to show its page. Untick matches to leave them, then choose Mark for redaction.

The marks are placed from the page's text, so check each page and adjust a mark with Redact where it does not cover the whole word. Scanned pages have no text to find until you use Recognise text; see Recognise text in a scanned PDF.

Export a redacted PDF

Choose Export PDF. PDF Editor asks you to confirm, then:

• replaces each page with marks by an image of the page with the marked areas painted black, so nothing underneath remains in the file. Text on those pages can no longer be selected or searched;
• flattens form fields and removes document properties and annotations from those pages;
• checks the exported file: the redacted pages must contain no text or annotations, and nothing from the original pages may have been copied into it. If the check fails, nothing is exported.

Pages without marks keep their text. The marks stay in the editor, so you can export again. Words recognised by Recognise text inside a marked area are left out of the exported PDF. Attached files are left out of a PDF with redactions. Bookmark titles are kept, so check them in Bookmarks and rename any that contain what you redacted.

A crop is not a redaction: content outside a crop is still in the file.

For help with redaction, Contact support.