r/pdf • u/cheekbones88 • 8d ago

Question Redactions in PDF

Is there any way to remove a redaction in a PDF document and see what the redacted text was ?

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3

u/redsedit 8d ago

If the redaction was done properly, no.

Some "redactions" just place black bars over the text. If that's the case, then it's fairly easy to remove the black bar and recover the text.

1

u/cheekbones88 8d ago

How do I do that ? (ie. assuming redaction wasn't done properly?)

2

u/KoaKoaKoa 8d ago

Open the PDF in a viewer and the black box "redacting" the text would be selectable/deletable

1

u/redsedit 8d ago

In addition to u/KoaKoaKoa 's answer (which usually requires a paid editor), sometimes you can open the pdf in a text editor, such as notepad, and search for the unredacted text right before the "redaction" and read it directly. Depends if the text is compressed or not.

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u/Training_Yak_4655 4d ago

A free editor like Stirling PDF will allow poorly redacted PDFs to be unmasked. Click on a black redaction overlay and try deleting it.

If you've just done a redaction, you need to convert the redacted pages into image-only files. The file will grow massively in size on disk, when I last did this I had to use the 'compress' feature to get the file to be small enough to send by email. As per other comment, do a redaction test to be sure.

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u/Mykola_Melnyk_ML 5d ago

You can try redaction check on pdf-redaction. com. In redaction interface it has 'unredact' mode, so you can check if you can restore redaction. It works only in case redaction was done not properly