Redact PDF files

With the “redaction” feature, you make sure you are in compliance with data protection regulations and make personal and sensitive data in PDF documents unrecognizable directly in the netfiles data room.

Administrators and users with write permissions have the option to redact individual words or areas in PDF documents.

Open the desired PDF document in the netfiles document preview under “All documents” and click on “redact” at the top.

Here you have the choice between “Redact text” and “Redact area”.

You can use “Area Redaction” to mark and redact entire areas in PDF documents (e.g. also graphics or photos).

If you want to redact specific information (e.g. e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, etc.), you can use “Text Redaction” on the left and selecting from the drop-down menu or entering a desired term in the “Search” field.

The areas in the document that have been found and should be redacted are indicated by a red border.

You can use the preview feature (eye with pencil symbol) to check the redactions again before they are finally applied to the document.

Click on the “Tick – Apply Redaction” in the top right-hand corner to apply the redaction. Please note that the original PDF file will be replaced by the redacted version and all private annotations will be deleted. The document will be closed and you can reopen it with the redactions.

If versioning is activated in the data room, a new version of the file with the redaction is created and the previous file versions are still available via the version history. If required, you should delete this.

The original PDF file is replaced by the edited version if versioning is not active. The original file is no longer available in the data room.