Overview

Traditionally, redacting a PDF proceeds by marking confidential text or part of an image in Acrobat or similar to permanently remove it (and any underlying content like notes, highlights, etc.) and replace it with a black box. Often, a code is applied too, representing the reason for a redaction, and a list of such redactions are filed in a privileged or redaction log.

Redactions in MasterFile are simply text or image MasterFile extracts to which you've set an initial redaction status of Pending.

Once applied, a black redaction icon indicates "Redacted" as below.

All redaction settings, status codes and error messages are found in the Redaction section at the top of an extract profile.

Basic operation

For text,

  1. Simply highlight the relevant section and make an extract.
  2. Expand the Redaction section, and set the Redaction status to "Pending".
  3. Save and close the extract.

Now you can Preview or Apply redaction(s).

Redacting images or graphics takes a slightly different process: use External Redaction to open those documents in either Kofax PowerPDF or Acrobat. When you've finished marking any areas to be redacted in those, switch back to MasterFile. MasterFile will close the PDFs and create redaction extracts automatically.

To redact vector graphics (drawings that scale without pixelation like charts, graphs, geometric shapes, clip-art etc.) use External Redaction and manually redact those areas directly on the PDF.