Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Bible

Chapter 29. Redacting Documents

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding redaction

• Using the redaction tools

• Redacting documents

Quite simply, redaction is the deletion of information from a document. You may want to use redaction to remove sensitive information for security purposes, to protect rights and privacy information, to eliminate classified information, to delete names of minors in legal documents, or to delete any other information you don't want viewed by others.

Redaction is much different from blotting out or hiding text, graphics, handwriting, or any other kind of marks. If you use tools like some of the comment tools in Acrobat to create markups that blot out some text and graphics in a document, the items are not permanently deleted. The document appears fine onscreen where you can't see items marked for deletion on a document page, but the PDF document still contains the original items. If the file is distributed, other users can access marked text and other data.

To understand why redaction tools are needed to permanently delete content from a PDF document, see the following steps.

STEPS: Understanding the need for redaction

1. Open a PDF document in Acrobat. Convert any InDesign CS file or an MS Office document to PDF, and open it in Acrobat.

2. Open the Comment & Markup tools. Open a context menu on the Toolbar Well, and select Comment and Markup. The Comment & Markup tools open in a floating toolbar.

3. Mark out some text. Select the Rectangle tool in the Comment & Markup toolbar. Draw ...