Search and redact text

Power PDF lets you search and redact specific words or phrases from an open PDF document, selected documents in a Portfolio, an entire PDF Portfolio, or in all PDF documents found in a specified folder or subfolder.

The program allows various search types as the basis for redacting, see the Search dialog box for details.

When performing a folder search, additional criteria can be specified by clicking the Advanced button and clicking on cells in the columns Key, Operation and Value. For instance:

[Keyword] [includes] ['Corp']
[Author] [includes] ['John Doe']

For detailed steps, see the following topics:

Search and mark text for redaction in one or more PDF documents

Select Security > Search and Redact.
In the Look In field, specify whether to search in the current PDF or multiple PDFs, see Search in multiple documents for the available options.
Under Search For, select a search type:
- Single word or phrase
- Multiple words or phrases
- Looks Like Search (TM) Pattern: Pre-defined patterns, such as US Social Security numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers, E-mail addresses, and dates. See Patterns and masks for details.
- Looks Like Search (TM) Custom Pattern: Custom-defined patterns (arbitrary masks). See Search by custom pattern (mask) for details.
Proceed according to your selection made above.
- To search a single word or phrase, enter any words, word fragments, or phrases of interest.
- To search multiple words or phrases, click Select Words and compile a search list.
- To search by pattern, select the desired pattern from the list.
- To search by custom-defined pattern, enter the pattern using the syntax shown.
Set the search filters such as Match Case or Match whole word only as you prefer.
1. For a single-word search, these options are in the main panel.
2. For multi-word searches, click Select Words to open the Words and Phrases to Search dialog box with the options.
The above options are not available for pattern and mask searches.
Click Search and Redact.
Verify the search result list. To refine your search, click New Search and modify search filters appropriately.
In the search result list, check all items you want to mark for redaction. If you want to mark all items, click Select All.
Click Mark Selected Results for Redaction. All checked search results will be marked for pending redaction.

You need to apply redaction to marked items to finalize the process. See Apply redaction to marked items for details.

Apply redaction to marked items

You need to mark items for redaction first. See Search and mark text for redaction in one or more PDF documents for details.

Select Security > Apply Redaction.

This will permanently and unrecoverably render unreadable all text and areas marked for redaction – both as a result of a search and manual selection.

You can also apply redaction in the document itself by right-clicking each individual redaction mark.
Optionally, select the Apply marks visually only, preserving marked content setting.

Use with caution! This setting prevents Power PDF from permanently deleting the marked content. It covers text and objects only visually, so it works securely for standard printing, but the information remains available for other operations, such as search.
The Apply dialog box repeats the warning that redaction cannot be undone. Click Apply to confirm and perform redaction in all opened documents.

The topic Redacting Content explains how to redact text and images by selection and also shows the appearance of marked and redacted text.

Redaction cannot be undone once it is applied. To avoid mistakes, we strongly advise you to make a copy of the original PDF files before you perform redaction; or save a redacted PDF as a new file with a different name and/or location.