Redact all instances of a word in a PDF, and miss none

The same name appears forty times in this file, and you can’t miss one. To redact all instances of a word in a PDF, don’t hunt by eye: search for it. In Dress Docs, search and cover finds every match of a name, word or number in a PDF with a text layer. You review each match, confirm it, and then it’s covered. Here’s how it works, where it stops, and how to check the result.

Why searching by eye misses one

Forty instances over sixty pages is a reading task, and reading tasks fail at the margins. A name in a footnote, a header or a table cell is easy to pass over. So is an account number split across a line. One missed instance undoes the other thirty-nine: the reader now knows who the covers hide.

Redact all instances of a word: search and cover

Search and cover is a Pro feature in the browser editor.

1. Open the PDF in Dress Docs. It stays on your device.
2. Search for the name, word or number.
3. Dress Docs shows every match it finds in the text layer.
4. Review the matches and confirm the ones to cover.

Search for each form the document uses. A person may appear as “Jane Smith”, “J. Smith”, “Ms. Smith” and “Smith’s”. Search finds what you type; the variants are yours to list.

Patterns: e-mails, IBANs, phone numbers

Some data comes in a shape rather than a fixed word. Search and cover also finds e-mail addresses, IBANs and phone numbers by their pattern, so you don’t type each one. You review these matches the same way.

Review every match before it’s covered

Search suggests; you decide. Nothing is covered automatically. Some matches aren’t what you want to hide: the firm’s own phone number, or a word that is also a name. Confirm only the matches that must go.

Want each cover to say why it’s there? Add a reason to the cover, also in Pro: how to justify redactions.

No text layer? Scans and photos are covered by hand

Search reads the PDF’s text layer. A scanned page or a photo of a document has none: it’s a picture of text, and Dress Docs doesn’t read text in images. Search finds nothing there, and you cover those pages by hand.

Export and check

Export once. Each page is flattened into one image with your covers in it, so the text under them is gone from the file (why a black box isn’t enough). Dress Docs then shows that the export has no text layer and empty metadata.

The rest of the job, start to finish: how to redact a PDF in about 30 seconds. Everything else the editor does is on the features page. See pricing for Pro.