I have a draft catalog to circulate at tomorrow’s volunteer meeting but it contains donor contact details and appraisa…
Open one of your PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Best practiceMake sure you are using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC or later, as some features are not available in Standard.
Go to the 'Tools' pane and select 'Redact'.
Best practiceYou can also find 'Redact' in the right-hand pane or by searching in the Tools search bar.
Click 'Mark for Redaction' > 'Text & Images', then use your mouse to draw a redaction box over the area you want to redact.
CautionDo not apply the redaction yet; just mark the area.
Right-click the redaction mark and select 'Repeat Mark Across Pages...'.
Best practiceThis feature lets you apply the same redaction area to a range of pages within the current PDF.
In the dialog, specify the page range and click 'OK' to mark the same area on all selected pages.
Best practiceReview the marks to ensure they align correctly on each page.
To redact recurring text, click 'Find Text & Redact', enter your search term, and use 'Find Next' or 'Find All' to mark all instances.
Best practiceYou can use 'Match case' or 'Whole words only' to refine your search.
To apply these redactions across multiple PDFs, go to 'Tools' > 'Action Wizard', create a new Action, add the 'Redact' step, and configure it to use your search or redaction marks.
Best practiceYou can add multiple files to the Action and run the redaction process in batch.
Click 'Apply Redactions' to permanently remove the marked content, then save your files.
CautionRedactions are permanent and cannot be undone after saving.
For consistent redaction across multiple PDFs, carefully match the area coordinates and dimensions in each file before applying redactions.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
Redacting visible content means you are permanently blacking out or removing text and images you can see on the page. Sanitizing hidden data, on the other hand, removes information you cannot see, such as metadata, comments, attachments, or hidden layers. Both steps are important to fully protect privacy, as visible redaction alone might leave hidden data exposed. Always do both for full security.
For many items like social security numbers or account numbers, Acrobat Pro offers a feature called pattern-based auto-redaction. This lets you search for specific patterns of numbers or text and redact all instances at once. After using this, it's a good practice to have another person review a random sample of the document to ensure all sensitive information was correctly removed.
It is important to verify redactions because sometimes text can still be hidden underneath a black box if the correct redaction tool was not used. By trying to select, copy, and paste the redacted area, or by searching for the terms, you can confirm that the text is truly gone and not just covered up. This step ensures that sensitive information is completely removed.
Yes, you can use the Redact tool on a scanned image, but first, the image needs to be converted into searchable text using Acrobat's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature. Once the scanned document is searchable, you can then select and redact the text just like any other PDF. If the scan quality is poor, OCR might not work perfectly, so always double-check the redactions.