Redacting Information in PDF Files - Free!

If you have a PDF you want to share, but want to hide some sensitive information, there is a way to do it for free. You'll just need the following ingredients:

• Adobe Reader® (free from adobe.com/reader)
• CutePDF™ Writer (free from cutepdf.com)
• The PDF file you want to modify

First install CutePDF Writer.  This is a very handy tool that adds itself like a printer to your system. Anything you print to it will be saved as a PDF file instead of going to a physical printer.

Next, open the PDF file you want to redact in Adobe Reader.  This is just how you'd normally view it. To make modifications, follow these steps:

1. Click on "Comment" in the toolbar. This opens the comment tools along the right side of the program.
2. Under "Drawing Markups", right click on the shape you'd like to redact with (typically the rectangle), and select "Tool default properties" from the popup menu.
3. Change the "Color" and "Fill Color" both to black, and make sure "Opacity" is at 100%, and click OK.
4. Click on the tool (rectangle for example) to select it, and draw a rectangle over the information you want to redact.
5. You can save this as a PDF if you like, but it's not necessary.

Now you have a document that looks redacted, but in reality you just drew black comments over the information, and that original information is still there.  If you save this and distribute it, someone can remove the comments, or even copy/paste directly from Adobe Reader.

To really redact it, there is one more step, and that's to print it using CutePDF.  By default this would not give you anything different than saving from Adobe Reader.  The trick is to tell CutePDF to print it as an image, and not a composed set of text and comments. Here's how to do that:

1. From Adobe Reader, go to the "File" menu and select "Print..." (or press Ctrl-P).
2. Make sure CutePDF is your selected printer.
3. Click the "Advanced" button to the right of the printer choices.
4. In the advanced dialog, check the box called "Print As Image", then click OK.
5. Press the "Print" button and select a file name when CutePDF prompts you for one.

That's it. Once CutePDF prints it as a PDF file as an image, the data you hid is no longer visible or retrievable.