Welcome > Features in Power PDF Advanced > About redaction and removing document elements > Search and redact text

Search and redact text

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

The program allows four search types as the basis for redacting:

  • Search a single word or phrase.

  • Search multiple words or phrases.

  • Search by pre-defined patterns.

  • Search by custom written patterns (arbitrary masks).

See Search dialog box.

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] ['Kofax']
[Author] [includes] ['George Washington']

For detailed steps, see the following topics:

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

  1. Search and Redact icon Select Security > Redaction > Search and Redact.
  2. In the Look In field, specify whether to search in the current PDF, multiple PDFs within a package, an entire PDF package or Portfolio, or all PDF files in a specified folder. Click Browse in the top-level folder list to specify a sub-folder.
  3. Under Search for, select a search type:

    • Single word or phrase

    • Multiple words or phrases

    • Looks Like Search™: 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™: Custom-defined patterns (arbitrary masks). See Search by custom pattern (mask) for details.

  4. 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.

  5. Set the necessary search filters such as Match Case, Match whole word only, Include comments, Include Bookmarks and more. For a single-word search these options are in the main panel, for multi-word searches, they are in the dialog box called by Select Words. These are not available for pattern and mask searches.
  6. Click Search and Redact.
  7. Verify the search result list. To refine your search, click New Search and modify search filters appropriately.
  8. In the search result list, check all items you want to mark for redaction. If you want to mark all items, click Select All.
  9. Under Redaction Mark Options, select any of the following options:

    • Mark whole word(s) for redaction: This is the default option, which marks all characters in the resulting words.

    • Mark partial word(s) for redaction: Select to mark only a part of the words found. The Settings dialog appears. Select from the options below:

      1. Mark: Select this option to specify how many characters to mark from the beginning or end of the word.

      2. Mark from: Select this option to specify the starting and ending character positions to mark.

  10. Click Mark Selected Results for Redaction. All checked search results will be marked for pending redaction.
  11. If you selected The entire PDF Portfolio or Selected folder in the Look In field, then the Output Options dialog box appears. Set the output folder and file naming options, then click OK.

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.

  1. Apply Redaction icon Select Security > Redaction > 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.

    Note You can also apply redaction in the document itself by right-clicking each individual redaction mark.

  2. 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.

Note 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.