Every line of text becomes an editable text box in the same place and size; the original is covered with a white patch. Then double-click a line to type.
Limits: the font becomes a standard font (Helvetica, Times or Courier), lines stay put, and the original text remains invisibly present in the file. Undo with Ctrl+Z.
Careful with a scan: in a scanned PDF the text sits invisibly on top of the scan. The white boxes then cover the scan itself and you are left with the recognised text, including its mistakes. Check the result, or undo with Ctrl+Z.
Select an element or pick a tool — the formatting options adapt here.
Open a PDF: the tool immediately looks for names, Dutch citizen service numbers (BSN), IBANs, email addresses and phone numbers and marks them in red. Check the boxes, add what is missing and save: then they turn black and the text underneath is really gone.
Good to know
A black box that merely lies on top is not redaction: the text underneath can still be selected, copied or read aloud. This tool works differently. When you save, every page with a black box becomes an image with the box burnt in; the original text, fonts and embedded images of that page are removed from the file, and a comment that lay over a black box goes too. As a result, the other text on such a page can no longer be selected or searched either. Pages without a black box stay ordinary text.
After opening, the tool looks for email addresses, phone numbers, IBANs, Dutch citizen service numbers (BSN, with the eleven check), Dutch postcodes and names that start with a common Dutch first name or initials. The places it finds are marked in translucent red, so you can see what lies underneath. A computer misses things and sometimes takes something for a name that is not one: go through every page, remove what is wrong and drag a box yourself over what is missing, such as a signature, an address or a photo. A scanned page has no text; you redact that entirely yourself.
When redacting, the file's properties (title, author, subject and keywords) are not carried over, because they often contain names. Form fields can no longer be filled in afterwards; what they contained remains visible only on the page. Bookmarks are carried over: check their titles. Everything happens in your browser; the PDF is not uploaded.
Choose a tool in the ribbon and click or drag on the page. Select = move/resize · Delete = remove (a selected thumbnail = that page) · Ctrl+Z = undo · right-click a thumbnail for page options. Redact turns the page into an image on download (the text really disappears).
Position relative to the top-left corner of the page.
Export with all annotations burned in (exactly as you see them).
This tool runs entirely in your browser: your PDF is not sent to a server. A password-protected PDF will not open here; remove the protection first with the Unlock tool.