Those working in the government, legal, pharmaceutical, healthcare and many other sectors often need to deal with confidential or privileged information. It is crucial to protect this information from being released to unauthorized readers. Traditionally, this has been managed through the process of redaction, which involves permanently deleting or censoring content so that sensitive information is appropriately protected.
Redaction has been a much-requested feature for Debenu PDF Aerialist; however, many people don’t realise that this functionality is built directly into Acrobat. To redact text or other content in your PDF document:
1. Open it in Acrobat.
2. Click Tools > Protection.
Protection tools in Acrobat
3. Manually select text or images by using Mark for Redaction, and/or designate entire pages for redaction using Mark Pages to Redact.
Mark for Redaction
Note: If you have not previously used Acrobat’s redaction features, you may also see the following message:
Using Redaction Tools dialog
4. Once you have marked all of the content for redaction, click Apply Redactions.
Apply Redactions.
5. Click “Yes” when you see the confirmation dialog.
Confirmation dialog.
Acrobat permanently removes the marked content, replacing it with formatting selected by the user. By default, this involves black bars. This formatting can be changed in Redaction Properties (Protection > Redaction Properties).
Redaction Tool Properties.
