Flatten Schmatten

[KeglerBrown]

I'm trying to redact a PDF. I've searched the forums, found instructions, followed to the best of my ability, but am not succeeding. I've tried using both the highlighter tool and the rectangle tool. I set the color to black and 100% opacity. I then flatten the PDF. No dice. I can still highlight the passage of text with the line redacted in the middle, and when I paste to Notepad the redacted text shows up. If I print the redacted PDF to any PDF printer then I can select the passage of text with the line redacted in the middle, and when I paste to Notepad the redacted text shows up. The window pane showing the list of comments shows no comments. I've tried tweaking the blending -- e.g. set it to normal. It makes no difference. The only thing that works is printing to image. Should I be able to permanently obscure text by highlighting or overwriting with a black rectangle and flattening?

I have attached an example.

Thx

-Mark

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi Mark,

I can neither see not select the text under the black in your example. Having said that I should point out that this is not true redaction - it is masking an no more. The good news is that true redaction as a specific feature is coming May 31st with the release of V3 of the Viewer.

hth

[KeglerBrown]

Sorry. I posted the PDF that I exported to image...

Here's another example...

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi again Mark,

indeed that file did not appear to have anything over any of the text. Can you tell me what you see on my example? I just used the highlight tool on your sample, black colour abd blend mode 'normal'.

Also - did you see my comment about true redaction?

[KeglerBrown]

I attached a couple of screenshots. In the PDF the text is covered, but in the text properties it's all there and if I copy and paste it's all there.

I caught your previous remark about a true redaction tool. It occurs to me that maybe I don't know what that means. Maybe everything is working correctly, but I thought the youtube video showed differently. Is it not possible to truly redact using the existing tools?

Thx

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Mark,

Yes the current version of our Viewer (and the flattening of comments) - will make any cover areas permanent part of your file, but the actual text still remains below and (Ctrl-A) will still select it. We are aware of this limitation, and the way to get around it is to export to images.

The actual text editing (that will really remove characters from the file and replace them with new ones) - is coming as a feature of v3 of the Viewer.

Hope all is straightened out now.

Cheers,
Stefan

[KeglerBrown]

Thank you for explaining.

Other than exporting to an image would printing to postscript or PDF without comments or some such harden the black highlighting or black rectangles such that the underlying text would be truly unrecoverable?

Thx

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello KeglerBrown,

Yes reprinting should do what you need. In the print dialogue of our Viewer go to the advanced options and select to always print text as curves. This will make sure that your text remains vector objects thus keeping the file size small, and still make is loose all it's "text" information - so no one will be able to select this as text any more.

Best,
Stefan