How to Redact PDF on Mac with or without Adobe Acrobat?

To protect us from any prospective troubles on sharing a PDF, we may need to remove sensitive or highly confidential information from PDF on mac. Basing on this, Adobe Acrobat products are all featured with a redaction tool. But, is there any other non-adobe solution to redact PDF on mac? The answer is Yes.

Redact PDF on mac with Preview

You can use preview, a handy free mac tool to redact PDF on mac. 

1. Open your PDF that need to be redacted with Preview.
2. Go to “Show Markup Toolbar” (box icon before spotlight)
3. Choose the Border Color as none or black, or any other colors to hide the contents as needed. 
4. Click “Export as PDF” to save the redacted PDF on mac. Don’t just “Save” after adding these redaction actions, otherwise, these redaction actions will be withdrew by others with Preview and no information will be hidden or removed. 

Make PDF Editable to Redact PDF on mac

PDF is a perfect way to store and present information as closely as we expect, but editing a PDF is not that easy as editing other documents. So is redacting PDF on mac. The easiest way goes to making PDF in editable formats on mac, then editing in Microsoft Word or other file editors, which are more open to unlimited editing.

To make PDF editable for redaction on mac, Cisdem PDF OCR Converter would be a great assistant to instantly export PDF and images into various editable formats with original file quality retained. Output format includes but not limited to Word, Excel, HTML, ePub, Text, PowePoint, Keynote.Besides, you can utilize this tool to create PDF, protect and unprotect, even compress PDFs.

Free Download

1. Import the PDF that you want to redact on mac by drag and drop. Batch uploading is supported and won’t take too much time.
2. Tweak the setting to export PDF as editable format, so that you can redact the PDF as needed.
   Choose page range and output, Word would be a preferred output. Turn the OCR button ON if you want to redact a scanned PDF on mac.
3. Click “Convert” to make the PDF you want to redact editable on mac.
4. Open the file in Word, then remove or edit any part in the PDF. Finally save your Word as PDF, you will get a redacted PDF.

If you have already installed Adobe Acrobat on mac

Assuming you are a subscribed Adobe user, Adobe redaction tool will get your problem solved. If you are using Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat free trial, you won’t able to use the redaction feature.

1. Run Adobe Acrobat on your mac and import PDF file you want to redact.
2. Go to Tools>Redact.
3. Choose Mark for Redaction>Text & Images. Choose the part you want to redact and select. 
4. Once you have selected the part to redact, go to Properties and choose the Redacted Area Fill Color as None (or black to hide the content). Then “Apply”, the part you selected will be removed or hidden, you successfully redact PDF on mac.

Try each of the redaction tools to remove sensitive contents from PDF with Adobe.

Now, it’s over to you…

How will you redact PDF on mac? It seems that abovementioned 3 ways are all feasible ways to redact PDF on mac. If you want an unlimited way to edit or redact PDF, make it editable first with a PDF OCR Converter for Mac, then redact as you want to.