How to redact a PDF
Redact PDF permanently removes the areas you mark: names, ID numbers, bank accounts, addresses, signatures or anything else that must not leave the document. It is what you need before publishing a ruling, sending a sample contract or attaching a receipt where only part should be visible.
The difference from drawing a black box in an editor is crucial: here the information is gone from the file, not hidden underneath.
Step by step
- Upload your PDF.
- Choose to mark an area to redact and draw a rectangle over each piece of data you want removed, on every page that needs it.
- Check the list of added elements and remove any you do not need.
- Click apply redaction, check the result and download it.
Why a black box is not enough
In a normal PDF, text is text: even with a black shape on top, it can be selected, copied or searched, and moving the shape reveals it. Plenty of 'redacted' documents have leaked in exactly that way. Cropping does not help either, because the content stays in the file.
This tool renders each page as an image, paints the marked areas black on that image and rebuilds the PDF from the pixels alone. The original text, hidden layers and page metadata are not copied, so what you blacked out cannot be recovered.
What you lose and how to compensate
Because pages become images, the result has no selectable text, links or form fields, and it may be somewhat larger than the original. If you need it searchable again, run it through OCR PDF: the visible text is recognised again and the redacted parts still do not exist.
Before applying, go through the whole document: sensitive details often repeat in headers, footers and appendices. Redact a copy and keep the original somewhere safe, because the result cannot be undone.
Frequently asked questions
- Can redacted content be recovered?
- No. Pages are rebuilt from an image where those areas are already black; the original text is not copied into the result.
- Why is the text no longer selectable?
- Pages are converted to images to guarantee nothing hidden remains. You can apply OCR afterwards to get the visible text back.
- Can I redact several areas and pages at once?
- Yes. Mark as many areas as you need on any page and apply them in one job.
- Is redacting the same as cropping?
- No. Cropping only changes the visible area and the content stays in the file. Redacting removes it.
- Are links and form fields lost?
- Yes. That is the price of truly removing the information; the result is an image-based PDF.