Redacting PDF documents

Prerequisite:

A licensed version of Advanced PDF (either the Annotation and Redaction license or the Advanced Editing license) must be available to your organization.
The Redaction Advanced PDF feature must be enabled in WorkZone Configurator.
The Advanced PDF pane must be added to the preview pane.

Redaction in this context is the removal of chunks of text from the original document prior to forwarding the document to other parties, for example removing sensitive, personal, private, or classified information not intended by policy or legislation to be distributed publicly. In the finished PDF document, redacted text is covered by black bars and cannot be reinserted into the document or made readable again.

Redacting text

When redacting, you are first finding and selecting text chunks for redaction, marking them for redaction but not actually redacting the text. You can manually mark sections of text for redaction or you can search for text which automatically marks the search results for redaction. Additionally, you can apply redaction search rules, which will search the text in the PDF document for a set of recurring patterns as defined in the search rule, for example a pattern that identifies the text as being an email address. All text that satisfies the applied search rule will be marked for redaction.

There are four default search rules: Email address, Web address, CPR number, and CVR number. Additional search rules can be created for your organization in WorkZone Configurator by a system administrator.

The PDF document is not at this stage irreversibly redacted. The redaction markings can be removed by you or others. Once you have found and marked all the text you want redacted, you either can apply final redaction to the document or exit Advanced PDF and return to the document later to continue your work.

Important: Once a document is redacted, the process is irreversible. You cannot restore the document and the selected text to its state prior to the redaction.
It is recommended to enable and use Document Versioning in WorkZone Configurator when redacting PDF documents.

Document review and multiple redactions

At any point prior to the final application of the redaction, you can send the document to other users who can continue redacting the document or review the text you have marked for redaction. A PDF document can contain multiple redactions and multiple users can redact the same document, but not at the same time. When a PDF document is edited, it will be locked in WorkZone Explorer to prevent users simultaneously editing the same document. The document lock will be reset after 15 minutes of document inactivity.

Users, including reviewers, can remove redaction marking of any text in the PDF document at any point prior to the final application of the redaction, but once the redaction process has been started, the redacted text cannot be restored.

An overview of all current redaction markings is be displayed at the bottom half of the Redaction panel, ordered by search results.

Note: Your changes are automatically saved every 5 seconds while working on the document. If you want to save your changes immediately, click Save.

Mark text for redaction in a PDF document

Open the preview pane for the PDF document you want to redact. The preview pane is typically opened from the Documents detail tab on the Case detail page or from document lists in WorkZone.
In the preview pane, select the Advanced PDF pane. If the Advanced PDF pane is not available, the preview pane must be configured to display the Advanced PDF pane.
To manually mark text for redaction:
1. In the Advanced PDF pane toolbar, click Select(Esc) to enable the selection tool.
2. In the PDF document, manually select the text you want to mark for redaction and then select Mark for redaction in the text tool bar.
  or
1. In the Advanced PDF pane toolbar > Edit , click Redact to change your mouse cursor to a crosshair cursor.
2. Select the text you want to mark for redaction.
To perform a search for text to redact
1. In the Advanced PDF pane, click Panel to open the left panel and click Redaction to open the Redaction panel in the left panel.
2. Searching for a specific text
  1. In the Redaction panel > Search text field, enter the exact text you want redacted. Note the redaction text search is not case-sensitive.
  2. Click Search to search for and mark the text in the document for redaction.
3. Applying search rules to the text
  1. In the Redaction panel, in the search field below the Search text field, select the search rule you want to apply.
  2. Click Search to search for and automatically mark the text in the document for redaction.
4. To get an overview of the located text, click Search to open the Search panel and display search results.

Remove redaction marking on a text

You can remove redaction markings in multiple ways:

Display text marked for redaction

Text that is marked for redaction is displayed with a red outline in the PDF document but you can also see a list of all text marked for redaction by search result or from manual selection.

In the Advanced PDF pane, click Panel to open the left panel and click Redaction to display a list of all different types of text marked for redaction under the search fields.
If you have performed multiple searches, the results of each search are displayed as well as the search text.
Click to remove redaction marking from all text originating from that specific search.
If you remove the MANUAL_REDACTIONS entry, all redaction marking performed manually will be removed.

You can also perform a normal search for the redacted text, but this search may not correspond to the redaction search as the normal search can be made case sensitive and/or limited to the whole word only.

Applying redaction to the document

When the PDF document is ready for redaction, you can open the document in the Advanced PDF pane and apply the redaction to the text marked for redaction.

Important: Once a document is redacted, the process is irreversible. You cannot restore the document and the selected text to its state prior to the redaction.
It is recommended to enable and use Draft Versioning in WorkZone Configurator when redacting PDF documents.

Open the preview pane for the PDF document you want to redact. The preview pane is typically opened from the Documents detail tab on the Case detail page or from document lists in WorkZone.
In the preview pane, select the Advanced PDF pane. If the Advanced PDF pane is not available, the preview pane must be configured to display the Advanced PDF pane.
In the Advanced PDF pane, click Panel to open the left panel and click Redaction to display the Redaction panel.
In the Redaction panel, click Apply Redaction to open the Confirm dialog.
In the Confirm dialog, click Apply to redact all text marked for redaction in the document.
Click Save to save your changes or wait 5 seconds after which document will be saved automatically.