What are the best ways to keep someone from reading text in a digital document that they should not see? Businesses across many industries work with an immense amount of information contained in PDF documents. It might be important to share some of these documents or make public disclosures using them from time to time.
However, surrounding the information authorized for release or sharing, there may be additional text that should remain private or secret. How can you blur content in a PDF to keep it protected when you need to release the document in full?
With paper hard copies, it’s easy enough to blackout a copy of the text and produce a sanitized version for release. With the right tools, such as Tungsten Power PDF, it is just as easy to accomplish the same task on a PC or a Mac. Let’s discover how easy it is to edit a PDF to obscure sensitive text.
Key takeaways
- To blur out text in a PDF, use the redaction tool in Power PDF.
- Remember, redactions are permanent once you save your redactions to the original file.
- Don’t use the drawing tool or redaction alternatives; the redaction tool is the only secure way to redact data.
Power PDF provides two easy pathways to hide text in a PDF file depending on how much content you need to redact. If you only need to blur a few sentences here and there, use the following manual method for applying redactions — it only takes four steps once you’ve opened the file. Here’s what to do next:
- Click “Security” on the main Power PDF ribbon.
- Locate the “Mark Redaction” option and click.
- Using your mouse cursor, highlight the text you want to blur out. A temporary red redaction box appears to let you confirm the text you wish to obscure.
- Click “Apply Redaction,” then be sure to save a copy of the document. The text is now permanently redacted.
Be careful not to save over the original copy of your document accidentally.
For jobs that require more in-depth redactions, you can use the “Search and Redact” tool from the Security tab instead of manually marking text. This functions much like a “Find and Replace” command. To redact data in a PDF:
- Navigate to the Security tab.
- Select “Search and redact.”
- Search for the terms that you’d like to redact throughout the document.
- Select any instances you’d like to redact from the list of results.
- Select “Mark selected results for redaction.”
- Save to finalize redactions.
For even faster redaction, explore our automated redaction modules.
Related Video: redacting data in PDF documents
Power PDF makes it so easy to blur out text in a PDF, reducing the time this task takes from hours to minutes. However, because of the sensitive nature of redaction, you should always be sure to keep the following best practices at the forefront of your work:
- Always create a separate copy of the document to work on as the redacted version. Redactions are permanent once applied, and you will not be able to undo them and recover the text.
- Always verify that you correctly applied redactions by checking the document after saving.
- Only use the built-in redaction tools to remove text. Do not use drawing tools to place black bars over text — any other PDF editor could easily remove those bars.
There are many reasons you may want to blur out text in a PDF. Many businesses use redactions in order to protect sensitive or personally identifying customer information. Let’s say you were training a new employee and wanted to use a real example of a past scenario with a customer. You can use PDF redaction tools to redact the customer’s sensitive information like a social security number or home address. That way, you can maintain customer privacy.
Text can be unblurred only if the PDF hasn’t been saved. As long as you don’t save your work, you can still modify, edit, and remove redactions. Once you save your redactions, they’re permanent. You won’t be able to unredact text in the document and the information beneath the redactions will not be able to be recovered.
Yes. The ability to edit text in a PDF is one of the many practical features of Tungsten Power PDF. PDF files can be created and edited using this automated software. Once changes are made, the PDF can then be converted to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, HTML, and other formats. Plus, Power PDF enables PDF editing from mobile devices, too. Edit using iOS or Android software.
No matter the type of document you need to redact, having the right tools makes the task faster, easier, and more reliable. Ensure you or your business have the necessary software to make these important edits without concerns related to accidental exposure of sensitive information. Explore these straightforward redaction tools and Power PDF’s other exciting features when you download a free 15-day trial version now.