Redact donor phone numbers and personal emails from the draft catalog PDF for the upcoming volunteer preview, review r…
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.
Redacting text with the proper tool permanently removes the information, making it unrecoverable. Drawing a black box only covers the text visually; the original text remains underneath and can still be copied, pasted, or searched for. Always use the dedicated redaction tool for security.
No, redacting only removes visible content. Hidden data like metadata, layers, or revision history must be removed separately. After redacting, you should run the 'Sanitize' tool to strip all hidden information from your document.
Redaction is permanent. Once you save a redacted document, you cannot get the original information back. Working on a copy protects your original document in case you make a mistake or need the unredacted version later.
Yes, for bulk personal information like SSNs or account numbers, you can use Acrobat's pattern-based auto-redaction feature. This helps you find and redact all instances of specific patterns quickly. After auto-redaction, it's a good practice to have someone else check a random sample to ensure accuracy.