Can the redacted text be recovered?

No. Redacted pages are rebuilt as images with the black bars baked into the pixels — the original text objects no longer exist on those pages. This is categorically different from drawing rectangles over live text.

Will the rest of the document still be selectable and searchable?

No — and this is the honest trade-off. Because pages are rasterized, all text on them becomes image data, not just the redacted parts. If you need the surviving text searchable again, run the output through the Searchable PDF tool to add an OCR text layer.

Is the document's metadata cleaned too?

No — this tool redacts page content only. Author names and titles in the document properties survive, so run the result through the Edit PDF Metadata tool and clear those fields before releasing the file.

Why are the black bars bigger than the words I searched for?

By design. PDFs store text in fragments that don't align neatly with words, and any fragment touching a match is covered entirely, plus margin. Oversized bars are safe; undersized ones are a leak.

Does redaction work on scanned PDFs?

Only if the scan has a text layer to search. For image-only scans, add one first with Searchable PDF, then redact — the OCR text is what the search runs against.

Redact PDF

Remove sensitive text from a PDF by replacing matching terms with black bars.

Drop PDF files here or browse

Max 100MB per file

About Redact PDF

Redaction is the permanent removal of sensitive information from a document — and doing it wrong is a famous failure mode. Drawing a black rectangle over text in a regular PDF editor hides nothing: the text is still in the file, one copy-paste away from recovery. Court filings and government releases have leaked names, account numbers, and privileged material exactly this way.

Convertora redacts properly by changing the nature of the page. You give it the terms to find; it locates every occurrence across the document, blacks out the matching text regions, and then re-renders each page as an image. The output pages contain no text objects at all in the redacted areas — there is nothing underneath the black bars to recover, by construction.

Matching is case-insensitive and deliberately generous: any text fragment that overlaps a match is blacked out in full, with a small margin. Over-redaction is the correct failure direction — a slightly oversized bar costs nothing, while a sliver of exposed text defeats the purpose. Page dimensions are preserved exactly, so the redacted file paginates and prints like the original.

How to use it

1Upload your PDF (up to 100 MB).
2Enter the terms to redact, one per line — names, phone numbers, account identifiers, project codenames. Matching ignores case.
3Click Redact. Each page is searched, every text fragment overlapping a match is covered with a black bar, and the page is re-rendered at high resolution as an image.
4Download the redacted file, saved with a -redacted suffix, and spot-check the bars before distributing.

Common use cases

Removing names and personal data from documents before a freedom-of-information or GDPR disclosure.
Blacking out account numbers on statements submitted as evidence or to a third party.
Stripping client identifiers from work samples used in a portfolio or proposal.
Redacting salary figures from a contract shared as a template.

Frequently asked questions

Tips

Search for variants: 'J. Smith', 'John Smith', and 'Smith' are three different terms. Add each on its own line.
Open the output and zoom into a few bars before sending. Verification takes a minute; an incomplete redaction can't be recalled.

100% private — runs in your browser

Convertora processes everything on your device using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Files never leave your browser, are never uploaded to a server, and are never seen by us or anyone else. The moment you close the tab, the data is gone — there is no temporary cloud copy, no log entry, no retained backup.

Because the work happens locally, processing speed depends on your device — but there are no rate limits, no daily caps, and no file size restrictions beyond what your browser can handle in memory. No signup, no account, no payment. The tool works the same in incognito mode, on a corporate network, or after the page has loaded once, even with the network disconnected.