I must share a payroll workpaper with department managers but the file contains account numbers and social security nu…
Open the PDF you want to redact in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Go to Tools and select Redact.
Click Find and Remove Text.
Enter the word, phrase, or pattern you want to search for in the search box.
Choose the location to search (e.g., current document or all PDFs in a folder), then click Search.
Review the search results and check all instances you want to redact, or use Select All to mark every occurrence.
Click Mark for Redaction to mark the selected instances.
Click Apply Redactions and confirm when prompted to permanently remove the marked content.
CautionRedactions are permanent and cannot be undone after saving.
Best practiceYou can customize the appearance of redaction marks before applying them by adjusting settings in the Redact tool.
Best practiceAlways double-check your search term and results to ensure all sensitive information is covered, especially with patterns like SSNs.
Save the redacted PDF with a new file name.
You can use the Find Text and Redact feature to quickly locate and mark all instances of sensitive words or patterns for redaction throughout your document.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
Drawing a black rectangle only covers the text, but the text is still there underneath. Someone can still find it by selecting all text and copying it. The Redact tool, however, permanently removes the text or image data from the document. This means the information is truly gone and cannot be recovered, making it safe for sensitive data like payroll identifiers.
Sanitizing a PDF is important because redaction only removes visible content. Hidden data, like metadata, layers, or past changes, might still contain sensitive information. Sanitizing removes all this hidden data, ensuring that no payroll identifiers or other private details are left in the file after redaction.
Yes, for many identifiers like Social Security Numbers or account numbers, Acrobat Pro has a feature for pattern-based auto-redaction. This means it can find and mark all instances of a specific pattern (like nine digits for an SSN) in your document automatically. After auto-redaction, it's a good idea to have a second person check a few random examples to make sure everything was hidden correctly.
Redaction codes are labels you can add to redacted areas, like 'PII' for Personal Identifiable Information or 'Confidential'. Using a consistent list of these codes across your team helps everyone understand why certain information was hidden. This makes it easier to review documents and ensures that your team follows the same rules for hiding sensitive data.