Can you use Snipping Tool to securely redact a PDF document (Windows)

Hello,

This forum is a user-to-user support forum. My name is Charles and I am a fellow user with decades of experience using Microsoft Word. I have written extensively on using Word and have authored help articles on the Microsoft site.

I would not count on this. It depends on how you do it, though. You would be better replacing the parts with something like xxxxx. To be sure that it is truly redacted, try again opening it in Word and see if you can find the redacted text. You could do that by changing the extension of the file. Add ".zip" after the .dotx. This changes the file to a zip folder. You can open it and look in the document contents for your redacted text. If it is there, you have not redacted it.

If you would like, you could send a link to a redacted pdf file. I would be happy to open it and tell you whether the text you redacted still shows. When you do that, in the thread, tell me the text I should be looking for. Save a sample document with the problem on OneDrive or Dropbox and paste a view link here. That should not contain any confidential or proprietary information.

You can use the Rand or Lorem AutoCorrect function to produce dummy text for a sample document. In a new line, typing =Rand(4,5) and pressing the Enter key will produce four paragraphs, each with five sentences of Microsoft Help text. Typing Lorem(4,5) and pressing the Enter key will produce four paragraphs of pseudo-Latin text.

Here is more on why and how to post such a document so I or others here can help you. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

I hope this information helps.

Please let me know if you have any more questions or require further help.

You can ask for more help by replying to this post (Reply button below).

Stay well

Yes, that should work.

.

By saving as PDF the second time the overlay "baked" into the document. It should be secure. As you surmized, if you didn't do the SAVE AS the second time it would not be secure.

Or, in the snipping tool you can use the "edit in Paint 3d" option to move the capture to a more powerful image editor.

Select an area

then use the CUT tool

this actually cuts out the part of the image you want to redact. That should be more secure.

Then you can Print to PDF to regenerate the PDF file.

Note: you know that the Snipping tool will soon be replace by "Snip & Sketch" it should be