Why a black box is not a redaction
Drawing a black rectangle over text hides it on screen, but the words are still in the file: anyone can select them, copy them, or search for them. Covering is not removing.
Here, every page that has a redaction box is re-drawn as an image with the boxes burned in, and the original page, with all its text, fonts, form fields and hidden layers, is dropped from the file. Pages without boxes are kept as they are. The output is then opened again and searched for any text under the boxes, and the result is shown before you download.
The trade-off: text on redacted pages is no longer selectable. You can run OCR afterwards to make those pages searchable again.
Steps
- Add the PDF.
- Draw boxes, or find SSNs, EINs, emails and phone numbers.
- Review every box.
- Apply; the output is re-checked for text under the boxes. Download.
Limits, stated plainly
- Pattern find works on the PDF’s text layer; on scanned pages, draw boxes by hand.
- Patterns are US-format (SSN 123-45-6789, EIN 12-3456789, US phone numbers) plus email addresses; always review every page.
- Document metadata is removed too.
Engine: pdf.js rendering and text search in this tab; pdf-lib in a Web Worker. Your file is not uploaded; check it yourself.