In this article, we explain how to redact a PDF, when it’s necessary to do it, and why it’s so important to do it properly.
In redacting, visible information is taken out of a document while the remainder is kept intact. This may involve hiding or blocking out individual words, sentences, paragraphs, or even whole pages. In most cases, the information hidden is text or numbers, but it can also be images, graphics, or similar.
It’s necessary to redact a PDF when the document contains confidential or sensitive information that cannot or should not be disclosed to a third party, as well as data that is protected under data protection legislation. Commonly redacted information can include the following:
Depending on the type of business or administrative procedure, you may also be required to redact information by the institution, state, international legislation, etc. It may also just be a matter of keeping your personal data private: You may need to share certain information in a document without revealing the sensitive data it also contains. For example, someone might need to share an agreement with a friend just for them to use it as a template while removing personal data.
Redaction is something that everyone, regardless of their profession or place of business, should be aware of.
In older times, thick permanent marker pens were used to blot out the information. Nowadays, as we all use digital documents, we need different tools to get the job done. Redacting a digital document is a delicate and not-so-easy task, and the main challenge is hiding the sensitive information while keeping the document’s formatting intact. The level of confidentiality of the information and its structure will determine how the redaction should be done. The most common way to perform redaction is to select the chosen information and make it appear as a black box.
One of the easiest ways to redact a PDF is Smallpdf’s PDF Editing Tool. Even if your document isn’t a PDF, you can use our Convert PDF tool. This will allow you to convert different file types to PDF. Head over to this article to learn more about How To Black Out Text in a PDF with the Smallpdf Editing Tool.
The first step is to identify and locate all the information that needs to be redacted. A checklist might be helpful for larger or more complex redaction tasks. Once you’ve identified all the content that needs to be hidden, you should be ready to get started with redaction.
But first! A few things to mention before you start. Keep in mind that redaction involves the modification of information and data. You should not redact information in the original document. For whatever reason you’re redacting information, you always want to make sure that you still have a copy containing all data. We therefore recommend working on a copy of the document in order to avoid altering the integrity of the original information. Don’t take risks!
Never rely on techniques like highlighting or changing the color of the text. It’s not the same as redaction and it’s a common mistake. The text can still be seen by highlighting it or by copying and pasting it into a text editor, and therefore it remains legible or recoverable. Redaction is about completely removing the content from the file while ensuring the file's integrity. See an example of data being highlighted in the image below.