Redact names and email addresses in a PDF

Start with the full name, not a short fragment

Suppose a document mentions Alex Morgan, A. Morgan and [email protected]. Enter each form on its own line under Custom keywords. A full name will not necessarily find initials, an old email address or a different spelling.

Avoid a short fragment such as Ann when you mean one person: it can occur inside a longer name or another word. Matching is case-insensitive and may cover a whole recognized word or line. Check the boundary rather than assuming only the exact letters will disappear.

Choose a list or an information category

Use a keyword list when you know the people or addresses you need to remove. Use the personal-name or contact-information categories to look for additional candidates. These are different jobs: a list is specific, while a category may select details you intended to keep.

For example, you may need to hide a customer email but retain your support address. Review both occurrences and choose Keep for the one that belongs in the sharing copy. Keeping one area does not mean that every occurrence of the same text should be retained.

Check every occurrence, including the footer

Open the original and redacted views together. Look in the main text, page headers, footers, tables and approval fields. A matching name on page one does not tell you whether page three was read correctly.

A name split across lines can be missed. If the result does not include a visible occurrence, add a manual box. A handwritten name, signature or email in a screenshot needs the same visual check, even when other text on the page is searchable.

Working with a scanned page? See how to handle text that cannot be selected.

Reuse the list when the next file arrives

Save a rule template once the names and category settings are correct. For another file, select the template before processing. Add new names when the recipient or customer changes; the saved list does not update itself.

With several PDFs, the same rules are applied to separate tasks. Review the matches in each task. This workflow does not copy a box at a fixed position to every page.

Processing several documents? Open the batch PDF workflow.

Look for information that the list did not cover

After processing, run Check & download with the intended output settings. The check looks for selected text in the rendered output. Also inspect usernames, initials and visible addresses that were not part of the list.

An address can still identify a person after their name is removed. Check the filename too. Download a separate sharing copy and keep the source in your own storage.