Redaction checklist: 7 steps before you send a file

This redaction checklist puts what data protection regulators and archivists recommend into seven steps you can follow before every send. It’s written for whoever does the redacting, often a paralegal or an officer with a deadline. Some steps are your judgment, and no tool can take them off you. Others Dress Docs does on every export. Each step says which is which, and where the advice comes from.

The redaction checklist at a glance

1. Work on a copy, keep the original.
2. Decide what goes: only what the recipient needs.
3. Cover with solid covers, never highlight or blur.
4. Remove what you can’t see: metadata and hidden layers.
5. Flatten the export.
6. Check the file before you send it.
7. Record what you removed and why.

Work on a copy, keep the original

The UK National Archives puts it plainly: “Always carry out redaction on a copy of the original record, whether paper or electronic, never on the record itself” (redaction toolkit). Germany’s Lower Saxony data protection authority gives the same advice (LfD Niedersachsen).

Dress Docs does this. It never changes the file you open. Every export is a new file, and your original stays on your device as it was.

Decide what goes: only what the recipient needs

Under the GDPR, personal data must be limited to what is necessary for the purpose (Art. 5(1)(c)). Ask what the recipient needs from the document, and cover the rest.

Two cautions from the National Archives’ toolkit. Don’t remove a whole paragraph when only a word or two must go. And read around each cover: an earlier sentence can give away what you removed.

This is your call. Dress Docs doesn’t decide what counts as sensitive.

Cover with solid covers, never highlight or blur

Paper blacked out with a pen can be read against a lamp or with more contrast, warns the Saxon data protection commissioner (Sächsischer Datenschutzbeauftragter). For images, it warns that blur can be reconstructed, with AI, and recommends a black bar over the data instead. Pixelation fails the same way, because it keeps part of the original (why a black box isn’t enough). On a PDF, a bar alone isn’t enough: Lower Saxony’s authority warns that covering text with a black box doesn’t remove it, and that this applies to PDF documents too (LfD Niedersachsen). A solid cover is only half the job; the export has to remove what’s under it.

Dress Docs does this. Covers are solid, black by default, and there is no blur or pixelation. On export the page is flattened, so the cover replaces what it covers (step 5).

Remove what you can’t see: metadata and hidden layers

A file carries more than its pages show. Author, dates and the software that made it sit in its metadata. Tracked changes, comments and hidden layers can hold text you deleted from view. The UK’s ICO guidance on disclosing documents securely covers these hidden places. The Lower Saxony authority asks you to remove the data, not just hide it.

Dress Docs does this. Author, title, producer, dates and the PDF fingerprint are removed from every export. What hides in a file, and how to see it: the metadata you forget to remove.

Flatten the export

A black box drawn on top of live text is a sticker: the text is still underneath (why a black box isn’t enough). The National Archives recommends passing a redacted PDF through a plain image format, so nothing hidden survives.

Dress Docs does this. Each exported page is one flat image with your covers in it. The export has no text layer, annotations, form fields or layers.

Check the file before you send it

The Saxon commissioner advises a final check: make sure nothing shows through and that no change can be undone.

Dress Docs shows the result, for the file you just made: no text layer, metadata empty. Then check it your own way.

Record what you removed and why

The National Archives’ toolkit asks for a record of each redaction: which document, which part was withheld, and the reason, with every exemption that applies. The record shows the part, “for example, ‘paragraph 2 of page 4’”, and need not describe the content.

Dress Docs can do this with Pro. Each cover can carry its reason, printed on the cover, and the redaction log records covers, reasons, pages and date, with no document content. How to word a reason: how to justify redactions.

Seven steps: Dress Docs takes care of four, shows you the check, and with Pro keeps the record. Open Dress Docs, or see every feature on the features page.