In this chapter…

…you will learn important steps to take prior to releasing redacted documents.

Before releasing the document, there are two final steps:

1. Review the document to make sure all sensitive information has been found and redacted as expected.
2. Remove all annotations (or just the Redax boxes), if you haven’t done so already.  Appligent recommends removing all annotations to ensure that no sensitive information remains in the document.

Reviewing the document

After you redact a document, you should review it. Open the document in Acrobat and check to make sure that all sensitive information has been redacted, as desired:

• Make sure that reviewers have marked all sensitive information accurately and completely.

Make sure that the Find Using List feature of Redax found all instances of specified text. See determining what can be redacted for help on what to look for.

Removing Redax boxes

To remove the Redax boxes from a redacted document, enter the following command:

$redaxserver -o <output> -rembox <input.pdf>

Example: Remove all Redax boxes from the redacted file sample_redacted.pdf, located in the samples directory, and save the results to remove_boxes.pdf.

In Windows:

>redaxserver -o samples\remove_boxes.pdf -rembox  samples\sample_redacted.pdf

In UNIX:

$redaxserver -o ./samples/remove_boxes.pdf -rembox./samples/sample_redacted.pdf

The figure below shows an example of a redacted area following execution of this command.

Removing annotations

If you highlighted sensitive information in a document, that information might remain in an  associated annotation following redaction. We recommend you remove all annotations before releasing your documents.

To remove all annotations from a redacted document, enter the following command:

$redaxserver -o <output> -remall <input.pdf>

Example: Remove all annotations from the file sample_redacted.pdf, located in the samples directory, and save the results to remove_annot.pdf.

In Windows:

>redaxserver -o samples\remove_annot.pdf -remall samples\sample_redacted.pdf

In UNIX:

$redaxserver -o ./samples/remove_annot.pdf -remall ./samples/sample_redacted.pdf

The figure below shows an example of a redacted area following execution of this command. Although the redacted area looks the same as the redacted area after running -rembox, all other annotations are removed from the document, as well. These annotations may not be immediately visible in the original document, but they pose a security risk if not removed, because they can be recovered by anyone with knowledge of PDF document structure.