A manager needs facts from a personnel file for a performance discussion but the file includes sensitive medical notes…
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 removes visible text and images you select, making them permanently blacked out. Sanitizing removes hidden data like metadata (author, date), layers, and old revision history that are not visible on the page. Both are important for full privacy. Redaction handles what you see, sanitization handles what is hidden.
Yes, the Redact a PDF tool works on scanned documents. However, if the scan quality is poor, Acrobat might have trouble recognizing text. For best results, make sure your scanned document has clear, readable text before you start redacting. If the text is not selectable, you might need to run OCR first.
Using a consistent reason-code list helps everyone on a team understand why certain information was hidden. It makes sure that all redactions follow the same rules and standards. This is especially important for legal or official documents, where clarity and accountability are key. It also helps if the document needs to be reviewed later.
Yes, for bulk personal information like SSNs, you can use Acrobat Pro's pattern-based auto-redaction. This feature lets you search for specific patterns (like SSN formats) and redact them automatically across many documents. After auto-redaction, always have a team member check a random sample to make sure everything was hidden correctly.