Redact & Sanitize

Learn to use the Redact tool to permanently remove private or sensitive information from your PDF. Use the Sanitize tool to remove information that is not visible in the file, such as comments, metadata, or hidden layers.

NOTE
Available in Acrobat Pro only.
Organizational Impact


Customer data protection, Risk management

Redact text & images

  1. Select Redact from the Tools center or right-hand pane.

    Redact Step 1

  2. Select Redact Text & Images > Properties to customize the appearance of your redactions including color of redaction boxes or text overlay.

    Redact Step 2

    To redact information, first mark the items for removal and then apply the redactions. You can redact entire pages or selected content.

  3. Select Redact Pages, then choose the page or page range to redact, and select OK.

    Redact Step 4

    Or, use the cursor to select the content to redact. You can see a preview of the redaction by hovering over the selected content.

    Redact Step 5a

  4. Select Redact Text & Images > Find Text & Redact to find specific content to redact.

    Use the search box to search for a specific word or phrase.

  5. Select Patterns to find certain types of information, then check the boxes and select Search & Remove Text.

    Redact Step 5b

  6. Select Apply in the Redact top menu to apply the marked redactions and save the redacted file.

    Redact Step 6

Sanitize document

  1. Select Sanitize Document in the Redact top menu.

  2. Select OK to confirm the removal of hidden information. Or, choose Click Here to selectively remove hidden information.

    Sanitize Step 2

TIP
To speed up the redaction process, check out the Action Wizard.
TIP
This video is part of the course Work smarter with Acrobat DC and Microsoft 365 that is available for free on Experience League!
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