The rapid technological developments in the 21st century have led to the availability of many ways to digitize everything, and documents are no exception. Thanks to this, digital documents today are often in the form of a PDF file, short for Portable Document Format, making it easy to edit, share online, and add a digital signature to them. As this format is crucial for many, the ability to use and work with it has become a key factor for many people.
Since such files often contain sensitive information such as phone numbers, addresses, or secret codes, concealing them before sharing is not a bad idea. Here, a program called PDF Redactor can do this on your behalf in a very easy way. Let’s review its features and how to use it.
It is likely that some may choose to convert a PDF file to a Word file in order to easily edit and delete unwanted texts and images, and then save it back to PDF. However, this process can be exhausting, especially if the file content is in Arabic, as converting Arabic PDF to Word is a completely different story. Therefore, PDF Redactor is a perfect solution for this situation.
PDF Redactor is a new program for the Windows platform that was released in late 2021 with the aim of providing a fast and easy way to redact PDF files, allowing users to blackout or delete sensitive texts and images to protect privacy. The program not only blocks the content to make it unreadable, but also ensures that the prohibited part cannot be found even if the search function is used in PDF file viewing programs, ensuring that the hidden content remains undisclosed. PDF Redactor also has other features, as it allows users to write text or add images to a PDF file, automatically open protected documents, rotate PDF pages, and more.
Upon downloading the program on your device and running it, you will notice that the graphical interface is very clear and does not contain many elements, making it direct and easy to use. Once PDF Redactor is running, you will be prompted to open a PDF document, and then you can use the program’s features. Therefore, click on the Open PDF button at the top and select the file containing sensitive information to be displayed within the program, or you can drag the file and drop it into the window.
After the document content is displayed in PDF Redactor, click on the Redact button on the toolbar to activate the text/image blackout tool, or the Delete button to activate the content deletion tool. Regardless, after selecting the appropriate tool, all you have to do is select the element you want to hide by dragging the mouse to highlight the area containing the texts or images. You can select as many elements as you like, and if you mistakenly select a part, click the Undo button to retract.
Once you are finished, click on the Save PDF button and then select a location to save the new version of the PDF file. Once you do that, PDF Redactor will immediately display the new version where you can see the changes made to the document. As expected, the selected text will be completely blacked out to erase any possibility of exposure through what is known as reverse engineering.
If you choose the Delete tool, the program will work to remove the selected area from the document and replace it with an empty part to keep the information hidden permanently. If the overall appearance of the document is important to you, the program provides a tool to customize the color in which the blacked-out part appears, which you can use by clicking on the Color button at the top, but you must do this before saving the file.
In general, if you want to conceal sensitive information from your PDF documents, PDF Redactor can be your reliable assistant. The program is free for personal use and only allows editing PDF files with less than 100 pages, but there is a paid version, PDF Redactor Pro, priced at $29.95, that can edit any PDF file, including files with more than 100 pages.
The good news is that the developer offers a free activation key to access the Pro version, which you can upgrade to by copying the code from the official program website at pdfredactor.com. However, this offer is available until February 15, 2022, so try to seize the opportunity now and keep this wonderful program on your device!
