What are the best ways to keep someone from reading text in a digital document that they should not see? Businesses across many industries work with an immense amount of information contained in PDF documents. It might be important to share some of these documents or make public disclosures using them from time to time.

However, surrounding the information authorized for release or sharing, there may be additional text that should remain private or secret. How can you blur content in a PDF to keep it protected when you need to release the document in full?

With paper hard copies, it’s easy enough to blackout a copy of the text and produce a sanitized version for release. With the right tools, such as Tungsten Power PDF, it is just as easy to accomplish the same task on a PC or a Mac. Let’s discover how easy it is to edit a PDF to obscure sensitive text.

4 Easy steps to redact any text in a document

Power PDF provides two easy pathways to hide text in a PDF file depending on how much content you need to hide. If you only need to blur a few sentences here and there, use the following manual method for applying redactions — it only takes four steps once you’ve opened the file. Here’s what to do next:

1. Click “Security” on the main Power PDF ribbon.
2. Locate the “Mark Redaction” option and click.
3. Using your mouse cursor, highlight the text you want to redact. A temporary red redaction box appears to let you confirm the text you wish to obscure.
4. Click “Apply Redaction,” then be sure to save a copy of the document. The text is now permanently obscured.

Be careful not to save over the original copy of your document accidentally. For jobs that require more in-depth redactions, you can use the “Search and Redact” tool from the Security tab instead of manually marking text.

Related Video: redacting data in PDF documents

Keep these redaction best practices in mind

Power PDF makes it so easy to create redact a PDF that you can quickly reduce the time a task takes from hours to minutes. However, because of the sensitive nature of redaction, you should always be sure to keep the following best practices at the forefront of your work:

• Always create a separate copy of the document to work on as the redacted version. Redactions are permanent once applied, and you will not be able to undo them and recover the text.
• Always verify that you correctly applied redactions by checking the document after saving.
• Only use the built-in redaction tools to remove text. Do not use drawing tools to place black bars over text — any other PDF editor could easily remove those bars.

Hide text in a PDF and secure your document with ease today

No matter the type of document you need to redact, having the right tools to hand makes the task faster, easier, and more reliable. Ensure you or your business have the necessary software to make these important edits without concerns related to accidental exposure of sensitive information. Explore these straightforward redaction tools and Power PDF’s other exciting features when you download a free 15-day trial version now.