Acrobat 9 and X offer powerful redaction tools including the ability to search on patterns such as:
While the default patterns are useful, you may want to create your own patterns.
Fortunately, it is possible to add your own patterns with a bit of work. In this article, I’ll discuss how to create and add your own patterns.
Redaction is the permanent deletion of data from
documents.
In the past, markers were used to black out information on documents.
These days, it simply doesn’t make sense to print out a document to redact it. The process is slow, expensive and inefficient.
Law firms, government agencies and corporations around the world rely on Adobe Acrobat to safely and permanently remove content from the data stream of documents.
Adobe first offered redaction tools starting with Acrobat 8 and redaction capabilities have continued to improve with each new release.
In Acrobat X Pro, several new Redaction features were introduced:
So, you want to redact some documents. How do you get started?
To help, I bring you Guide to Using Redaction in Acrobat X Pro. This article is and update of my earlier article for Acrobat 9 and offers a step-by-step guide to using these tools in your firm or organization.
In this article I cover:
Redaction is the permanent deletion of data from
documents.
In the past, markers were used to black out information on documents.
These days, it simply doesn’t make sense to print out a document to redact it. The process is slow, expensive and inefficient.
Law firms, government agencies and corporations around the world rely on Adobe Acrobat to safely and permanently remove content from the data stream of the documents.
Adobe first offered redaction tools starting with Acrobat 8 and redaction capabilities have continued to improve with each new release.
So, you want to redact some files. How do you get started?
To help, I bring you Rick’s Guide to Using Redaction in Acrobat X Pro.
Topics Covered
Redaction is the permanent deletion of privileged or sensitive information from documents. Acrobat 8 Pro introduced a comprehensive set of Redaction tools to the product. Acrobat 9 added additional tools and capabilities.
In this article, I’ll discuss three tips and techniques for working with redactions in Acrobat 9 Pro:
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Want to know how Redaction works in Acrobat?
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Watch a brief
Redaction tutorial on my Legal Movie Page. |
Watch a one-hour
Redaction and Metadata Removal eSeminar |
Note: I’ve since published a more comprehensive article Rick’s Semi-definitive Guide to Redaction in Acrobat 9.
Read on . . .
In my Custom Redaction Pattern article, I discussed how you can create new, customized redaction patterns to find specific types of information.
In that article, I pointed out that at the time we shipped Acrobat 9, Adobe didn’t include patterns for Canadian Postal Codes or Social Insurance numbers.
Fortunately, Adobe has posted revised patterns which you can install to offer specific patterns for use in
Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. (The article ID is kb405632).
The link above has all the information you need to download and install the updated patterns.
Note: If you’ve previously created custom patterns be careful. The updated pattern will overwrite your existing pattern file if you simply replace it. Make sure you follow the instructions to rename your existing file first.
Adobe Reader 8.13 and Adobe Acrobat 8.1.3 are now available:
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Update Link
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Acrobat 8 Win
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Acrobat 8 Mac
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Adobe Reader (All)
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The Adobe Acrobat/ Reader 8.1.3 update addresses a number of customer workflow issues and security vulnerabilities while providing more stability.
Note: Acrobat 9.0 and Adobe Reader 9.0 do not require a security update.
The Acrobat/Adobe Reader 8.1.3 Release Notes contain an exhaustive list of the fixes.
There is one fix that has been eagerly awaited in the legal community.
Acrobat 8 sometimes did not display overlay text after redactions were applied to image-only PDFs. This was only a display issue as all information was absolutely, and securely, redacted.
I’ve written a bit more about the issue below if you’d like to read on.
Redaction is the permanent deletion of data from documents.
Documents are redacted in order to maintain privacy, censor state secrets, or protect intellectual property.
I have written about Redaction previously in this blog ( Redacting PDFs | Redaction Part 2: Something Else You Shouldn’t Do ) pointing out the dangers of improperly redacting files.
Acrobat 8 Professional now make many of the dangers and workarounds moot, so this is a welcome tool for the legal market.
NOTE: Since I wrote this original article, Acrobat 9 and Acrobat X both have included many advances in Redaction.
The new redaction tools are quite powerful. Let’s take a look…
Note: Acrobat 8 Pro and up offer true Redaction tools which permanently remove information from the datastream of the document. You no longer need to use the method listed here. Acrobat 8 Standard and up offer true, Metadata removal which can automatically detect covered up text and other problems.
I’ve received several comments about my article on redaction advocating a different method of producing the redacted PDF.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just add mark-ups covering information and print it to the AdobePDF print driver instead of saving to a TIFF file?
Doesn’t this “flatten” the file eliminating information underneath giving the same results?
Let me state this clearly: No it doesn’t!
Read on to learn why . . .
Note: This article was written before Acrobat 8 shipped which includes built-in bullet-proof redaction tools.<\p>
Redaction, by definition, means removing information from documents. In the old days of paper, xacto knives were used to cut text from the paper and it was then photocopied with a black sheet of paper behind it.
As numerous folks have found out, covering up information in an electronic file is not the same as deleting it.
Note: This article was written before Acrobat 8 shipped which includes robust tools for detecting improper redactions (Acrobat 8 Standard and Pro) and full-featured Redaction tools (Acrobat 8 Professional). Current versions of Acrobat have greatly enchanced Redaction tools with the ability to mark, add exemption codes, search and redact and much more.
