Redact sensitive content

The Redaction tools let you permanently remove (redact) visible text and images from PDFs. In place of the removed items, you can have redaction marks that appear as colored boxes, or you can leave the area blank. You can specify custom text or redaction codes to appear over the redaction marks.

Note: If you want to locate and remove specific words or phrases, use the Search And Redact tool  instead.
Text marked for redaction (left), and redacted (right)
  1. Choose View > Toolbars > Redaction.
  2. (Optional) To set the appearance of redaction marks, click Redaction Properties.
  3. Select the Mark For Redaction tool .
  4. Mark items you want to remove by doing any of the following:
    • Double-click to select a word or image.

    • Press Ctrl as you drag to select a line, a block of text, an object, or an area. Use this method to select areas of a page in a scanned document.

    To preview how your redaction marks will look, hold the pointer over the marked area.
  5. To redact the marked items, click Apply Redactions in the Redaction toolbar.
  6. Click OK to remove the items. The items aren’t permanently removed from the document until you save it.
  7. If you want to search for and remove hidden information in the document by using the Examine Document feature, click Yes. Otherwise, click No.
  8. Choose File > Save, and specify a filename and location. If you don’t want to overwrite the original file, save the file to a different name, location, or both.

For information on using the redaction tools in legal situations, see http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/.