PDF Tool
Redact PDF
Permanently remove sensitive text or areas from a PDF — draw boxes, or find every email, phone number or word automatically. Redacted content cannot be recovered.
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Drag a PDF here, or click to browse
Single file · Max 100.0 MB
How it works
- 1
Upload the PDF.
- 2
Draw boxes over anything you want permanently removed — drag with a mouse or your finger — and/or use 'Find and mark' to search for a list of words, a pattern (regex), emails, phone numbers or long numbers — optionally on chosen pages only.
- 3
Review the matches shown with their surrounding text, untick any you don't want, and mark the rest; then check every page and add any that were missed.
- 4
Click Apply to export — each marked page is rebuilt as an image with the covered content genuinely gone.
Redact PDF — frequently asked questions
- Is this real redaction, or just a black box drawn on top of the text?
- Real redaction. Many tools only draw a black rectangle over text while leaving the original text underneath fully intact and extractable. This tool rebuilds every marked page as a flattened image, so the underlying text on that page is genuinely deleted, not hidden. There is no way to recover a redacted area from the output file.
- How reliable is 'Find and mark'?
- It's a time-saver, not a guarantee. It searches the PDF's text, so scanned pages (which have no text) can't be searched, and a value split across two lines can be missed. Each mark covers the whole line segment the match is in, to be safe. Always look through every page before you apply.
- Can I search for several words or a pattern at once?
- Yes. Put one word or phrase per line (up to 50) to find them all in one pass, or enter a regular expression for patterns like invoice numbers. You can match case, whole words only, and limit the search to a page range. Every match is listed with its context so you can untick the ones you want to keep.
- Does this affect pages I didn't redact?
- By default no — only pages with a mark are rebuilt as images; other pages are copied across unchanged, so they stay searchable and the file stays smaller. If you want nothing hidden to survive anywhere, switch on 'Turn every page into an image'.
- Will the output file look different — lower quality, bigger file size?
- Marked pages are rendered at high resolution, so text and images should look sharp at normal zoom. Those pages become images, so they are larger than the originals and their text can no longer be selected.
- Does the redacted file still contain the original's author, bookmarks or attachments?
- No — the output is a brand-new document. The title, author, bookmarks and attached files are not carried over.
- Can I redact on my phone?
- Yes — drag a finger across the page to draw a box. Use the Scroll button to move around the page without drawing.
- Can I redact a password-protected PDF?
- Not directly — unlock it first with the Unlock PDF tool (which needs the correct password), then redact the unlocked file.