Drawing black rectangles in an ordinary editor leaves the text underneath – a mistake that has exposed court filings and government reports. PDF Converter redacts properly: every page with a redaction is rebuilt as an image with the black boxes burned in, so the hidden words simply no longer exist in the file.
How to redact a PDF permanently
- Open the PDF and drag boxes over anything to remove, page by page.
- Optionally list words or numbers to find and redact everywhere.
- Apply redactions and download the cleaned file.
Good to know
- Pages without redactions are copied unchanged and stay searchable. Redacted pages become images – run OCR afterwards if they must be searchable.
- Document metadata (title, author, keywords) is also cleared, since it often contains names.
- Search-term matching uses the PDF’s text layer; scanned pages without text need boxes drawn by hand.
Frequently asked questions
Is the redacted text really gone?
Yes, on redacted pages. They are rendered to an image with the boxes burned in and the original page content is discarded.
Why not just draw a black box?
A drawn box is a separate layer on top of text that still exists and can be copied out. True redaction removes the text itself.
Can I redact the same name everywhere?
Yes. Enter it in the search terms box and every occurrence on every page is redacted.