Failing to properly redact text in a PDF can not only lead to embarrassment, but it can sometimes also lead to legally disastrous situations.
The widely used PDF format captures text and images exactly as the author intended regardless of the viewer application or platform. The format is designed to store text in a way that is read-only but available to be copied. It is this “copying” part that can lead to trouble when people are trying to remove details from a PDF document.
Redacting text from PDF documents is widely used to remove sensitive details from a document prior to distribution; this can be for inter-company communications, government documents, and court documents.
The issue arises as most users attempt to redact text from a PDF by simply adding black rectangles on top of the words they are trying to hide. Unfortunately, drawing boxes over text in a PDF just adds the box - it doesn’t delete the text underneath them. Anyone can still access the text beneath by simply selecting the text, copying it, and pasting it into their word processor.
There have been so many cases of embarrassing and legally disastrous situations caused by the ineffective use of box-overlays to redact text with the most notable being the disclosure of key allegations in the Paul Manafort prosecution case in 2019 alleging his connection to a purported Russian-connected associate.
If you need to properly redact text from a PDF prior to distributing it, it couldn’t be easier with All-About-PDF by following the steps below or watching the video at the bottom of this article.
If you haven’t already, download and install All-About-PDF from here
Open All-About-PDF from your Windows Start menu
Click on the REDACT TXT button
When the Redact Text window loads, click the “…” button and select the PDF you would like to process. You can specify a wild card (e.g. *.pdf) to process multiple PDF files
You can click the Selection button to open the PDF in a viewer and interactively select the words and sections you would like to redact or
You can click the + button to add the words and phrases you would like to redact
You can also specify the color of the redaction box
Click the REDACT button to process the PDF and the result will be saved with “_redacted” appended to the file name
You can be assured that when text is redacted from a PDF using All-About-PDF, it is not just overlayed with a black rectangle but is actually removed from the document and cannot be retrieved.
To get started with the text redaction of your PDF documents, download All-About-PDF today!