Auto Redact PDF

Redact a PDF by searching rather than by marking areas. Give the tool a list of words, or a regular expression, and every match across the document is found and removed. On a long document this is both faster and considerably safer than working page by page, because the reason redaction fails in practice is almost always a missed occurrence rather than a badly drawn box.

How to auto redact a PDF

  1. Upload the PDF.
  2. Enter the words or phrases to redact, one per line, or supply a regular expression pattern.
  3. Choose whether matching should be case sensitive and whether whole words only.
  4. Run the redaction and check the output before distributing it.

Frequently asked questions

Can I redact a pattern rather than fixed words?

Yes - regular expressions are supported, which is how you catch every account number, email address or national ID in a document without listing them individually.

Does it work on scanned documents?

Only if there is a text layer to search, so run OCR PDF first. Be careful here: OCR errors mean a term can be present visually but not match the search, and the visible image is what a reader sees.

Is the text actually removed?

Yes, matched content is removed rather than covered. Verify by trying to select or search for the term in the output.

What if a name appears in the metadata as well?

Search-based redaction covers page content. Run Edit PDF Metadata or Sanitise PDF to clear the document properties too.

Other security and signing tools

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection and processed on CoonTool's own server, not in your browser. The working copy is deleted automatically once the job is done, and in any case within 24 hours. Nothing is stored permanently and no account is required.