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Redact PDF Online — True Source-Level Removal

Most "redact PDF" tools just draw a black rectangle on top of the text. The text is still in the file — anyone can copy, search, or recover it by removing the overlay. WT-PDF does real redaction: it deletes the characters from the PDF content stream and then draws the black bar. The removed text is unrecoverable.

Open the editor

How to redact a PDF

Open wt-pdf.com and drop in your PDF.
Highlight the text you want gone (or double-click a single word).
Click Redact in the edit popup.
Download. The text is removed from the source and a black bar is drawn at its exact position.

Why this matters: if you "redact" by drawing a black box in most PDF apps, the text behind it is still extractable with a copy/paste or simple scripts. Journalists, lawyers, and HR teams have been burned by this repeatedly. Always verify: paste the downloaded PDF into a plain-text extractor and confirm the words are gone.

What WT-PDF handles

Standard ASCII text runs (the common case).
Text split across multiple Tj/TJ operators — the matcher joins them.
Text with baked-in font sizing via Tm scaling + chained Td moves (e.g., Excel → Acrobat PDFMaker exports).
Text whose show-op straddles a /Contents stream boundary.
Hex-encoded glyph runs when the position is unambiguous.
Form XObjects — XObject content streams are walked recursively.

What it can't do

Path-drawn glyphs (characters rendered as m/l/c line segments rather than a font). These aren't text; no text-removal approach works.
Scanned PDFs. If your "text" is actually an image, use Cover & Replace to paint over the region, then download — but OCR'd text underneath would stay.

Delete vs. Redact

Delete removes the text from the source without drawing a black bar — useful when you want the whole surrounding layout to close up visually. Redact removes the text and adds a black bar so readers see that something was removed. Both paths share the same source-level deletion; only the visual marker differs.

FAQ

Is the redaction really permanent?

Yes. The matched text is overwritten with spaces (byte-for-byte, inside the literal string) directly in the content stream. After saving, there is no text to copy or search under the black bar.

Does it work on all PDFs?

It works on any PDF where the text is real text, not drawn as paths or baked into a scanned image.

Can I preview first?

Yes. Double-click, hit Preview to see the effect, and either Accept or Cancel.

Can I redact many words at once?

Yes. Use Find & Replace, check "apply to all occurrences", or select a range that spans multiple cells — the tool iterates each match.

Related: Remove PDF password · Sign PDF · Draw on PDF