Adobe Acrobat – Redact / Remove Information from a PDF

Learn how to permanently remove sensitive content or private information from PDFs using the Redact tool in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. You can delete sensitive text, graphics, or hidden data on Mac or Windows. You can practise with these example documents if you wish. Practice Documents.

There’s a couple of different methods, we’ve included steps for the one we use but Adobe have other ways here.

The video below will guide you through, under the video is a step-by-step screenshot walkthrough.

Open the Redact tool

Step 1: Open the redact tool image

 Select a file for redaction

Choose Select a File, and then open the Employee Record.pdf sample file or other PDF document from which you want to redact sensitive information.

Step 2: Select file for redaction image

 Mark content for redaction

Click Mark for Redaction in the top menu to mark items you want to permanently remove from the file. You can remove different types of information:

  • Choose Text & Images to highlight text and graphics for removal.
  • Choose Pages to mark the current page or a range of consecutive pages for redaction.
  • Choose Find Text to search for specific content you want to permanently remove. You can search in the current document or across PDFs in a folder on your computer. Search for a single word or phrase, multiple words, or patterns. Please note that text in images and line art cannot be searched.

In the sample file, choose Mark for Redaction Text & Images. Then highlight the text in the Name, Address, Telephone, E-mail, Social Security Number, and Date of Birth fields.

Step 3: Mark content for redaction image

 Click Apply

Click Apply to remove the marked areas of content. Then click OK in the resulting dialog box to confirm that you understand the selected content will be permanently removed through black out. Acrobat will apply redactions and create a new file with “_Redacted” appended to the file name, with all marked content covered by black boxes. The original file remains unchanged.

Step 4: Click apply image

 Find and remove hidden information

You can also use the hidden information feature to find and remove hidden information in your redacted file. To do so, click Yes in the subsequent dialog box. Acrobat DC will then search for hidden information and show you the results. Click Remove to remove this hidden data.

Step 5: Find and remove hidden information image

 Save your redacted file

Once you have removed all sensitive content from your PDF file, choose File Save to save the redacted file to your desired location. If you close the file without saving it, all redactions will be lost. Learn more about using the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC redaction tool to remove sensitive information from PDF files.