Redact Tool Removes All Field Text

[SRivers33]

I'm working with sensitive documents and attempting to redact just the sensitive information from them. However, when I apply the redaction to that information it completely wipes the entire text field which isn't going to work for my application. Any ideas?

[Dimitar - Tracker Supp]

Hi SRivers33,

Welcome to our forum.

This is how the redaction tool works, it destroys the information you don't want others to see.

If you want to just cover the information and not destroy it, you may use a rectangle or similar annotation, and place it on top of the content.

Regards.

[SRivers33]

I must not have been clear. My apologies. Let's say in this large body of text that the only word I want to redact is the word redact. When I go to redact the word redact the entire body of everything you see written here is gone. That's NOT how I want the tool to work. I still need the surrounding text.

[Dimitar - Tracker Supp]

Hi SRivers33,

Thank you for the clarification.

That should not be happening!

Can you setup an example file that has the same behavior as your original documents, and send it to us?


Regards.

[SRivers33]

I downloaded a non-sensitive random PDF online so that I could share it here but it works on that. Then I tried flattening comments on my original document and it worked despite there not being any comments on my document. I'm not sure why that works but it seems to do what I need.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, SRivers33

Just reviewing this topic, I think there may have been a misunderstanding, you mention in your first post "fields" I expect you mean form fields. the Redaction tool can remove/cut/fine tune what "base content" is being deleted, even cutting out a section of an image, or the lower half of text, but when it comes to comments and form fields, this is not possible due to the way the data is stored in these objects, as such, if any part of a comment (or form field) is overlapped by a redaction box, the entire object, and all contents will be removed. This is to ensure that the redaction is working as expected, and not retaining any information that you wanted removed.

As for why flattening comments fixes the issue that you were having, that is because the flatten comments function converts all comments, and form fields into base content objects, they lose their functionality as comments or form fields (so if a form field has value calculation, that is no longer going to work), and if a typewriter comment was floating near a base content text block, you may find that it is included in the paragraph as part of the text selection in some cases, now that it has been converted to base content. This does however have the benefit of stripping the special comment formatting that prevents partial deletion of the content/selection, allowing you to delete only the segment you want to get rid of.

Kind regards,

[SupercanelP085]

In the new Version Build 10.1.0.380 ( 05 Sep 2023 ) they seem to have improved the Function.

image.png

also with reference to this thread.

[Jordan - Tracker Supp]

Welcome to our forums SupercanelP085 !

And thank you for noticing.