Redact email addresses with PDF Redact
This opens a contact sheet with two invented addresses and the email finder switched on. Press Mark all and the addresses are boxed on the page; untick any you want to keep.
- Open your PDF. The Email addresses pattern is already ticked.
- Press Find matches: every address is listed with its page.
- Untick any address that should stay visible, or press Mark all.
- Preview the pages, export, and read the report before you download.
What to know
The email pattern reads local-part@domain.tld, including dots, plus signs and subdomains such as name@mail.example.co.uk. It works on the PDF text layer, so an address that is printed as an image, or split by the PDF into pieces that are not adjacent, may be missed or only partly boxed. The preview shows exactly what will be covered.
Addresses also hide in places people forget: a header on every page, a footer, a hyperlink target. A mailto link target does not show on the page, and it disappears anyway because the output has no links at all. Check the visible text of every page for addresses the pattern could not read. Patterns are a starting point, not a guarantee. They are written to find the usual shapes and will miss unusual ones, such as addresses written out as name at example dot com.
Updated · Cosmovex
Questions
Will it find addresses written as name at example dot com?
No. The pattern reads normal addresses. Written-out forms need an exact term, a regex you write, or a manual box.
What about mailto links in the PDF?
Links are not carried over. The output has no link annotations; only the visible text of the page remains, as a picture.
What do I lose when the output is made of images?
Text in the whole output can no longer be selected, searched or copied, links and form fields stop working, and the file is usually larger. That is the cost of making sure the covered content is really gone, and the tool says so before you export.
How do I know the black boxes really removed the text?
After export the tool re-opens the file it just wrote and checks it: it contains only page images, there is no text layer to extract, and the pixels inside every box are black. You should still open the result and read every page; the checks cannot tell whether you covered everything sensitive.
The free plan covers everything on this page. PDF Redact Pro ($29, paid once) is described on the PDF Redact page.
