Redact PDF
Black boxes,
with nothing underneath
Draw boxes over what should not be read. Every page with a box is redrawn as a picture with the boxes painted in, and the finished file is read back before you can save it: no text on those pages, and none of the covered words anywhere in the file.
Drop a PDF here, or choose one
The document is opened, drawn and rebuilt in this tab. It is never uploaded, and nothing about it is stored.
Before you send it
A redacted document is usually about to be sent. Locking it with a password is the step after this one.
Protect PDFQuestions
Is the text under a box taken out of the file, or only covered?
Taken out, on every page with a box: the page is replaced by a picture of itself with the boxes painted in, so there is no text left on it to select or copy. Before you can save, the finished file is read back. The redacted pages must carry no text at all, and each piece of text that was under a box is searched for in the file. If any of it is found, nothing is saved.
Why does the whole page stop being text?
Because that is how the text under the boxes is removed. Taking only the covered letters out of a page means editing how its fonts are written, and that is where redactions have quietly failed before. A picture of the page has no letters to leave behind. The cost is that nothing else on that page can be searched or copied either.
What about the same words somewhere else in the document?
Only what is inside a box is removed. If a name is on the first page and on the seventh, box it on both. The check before saving stops a file in which the exact text of a covered line turns up again, but it only recognises text it can match exactly, so it will not find every mention for you.
What can the check not see?
Text a file stores only as its font’s own codes, which no search can spell; strings of fewer than four letters, which occur by chance in any file; and anything on a page you did not box. The redacted pages themselves are checked for any text at all, whatever its length.
What happens to the title, bookmarks and attachments?
They are not carried over. The title, subject, keywords, author and XMP metadata are cleared, and bookmarks and attachments are left out, because any of them can repeat what you covered. Pages without a box keep their notes and links, but form fields stop being fillable.