Elise Nolan, Review: Microsoft's Redaction Tool for Word (Plus PDF Resource)
TechnoLawyer member Barbara A. DiFranza asks:
"I scanned documents for client A in Adobe 7 as a graphic. A few years later, these documents became of interest to client B's counsel and I sent them to her after redacting Client A's name. I used a text box and made A's name and identifying information totally black and opaque. I then put a security setting on the document so that it could not be changed. I e-mailed it to Counsel for B thinking I had whipped the problem. Alas, Counsel B was able to print the document free of my little black boxes because, under the "Comments and Forms" drop down menu in the Print Dialog box, she simply chose "Document" as opposed to "Documents and Markups." Luckily, Counsel B manually redacted the documents before making use of them.
"I've searched the Adobe manual and Carl Young's Adobe Acrobat 6.0 for a solution. Unfortunately, I cannot find a solution. I was unable to mark up a document in Adobe and print to Adobe in order to eliminate the underlying document. If any of you has a solution short of printing, manually blacking out and re-scanning, I will be most appreciative."
My firm has recently begun using Microsoft's free redaction tool for Word. It's extremely easy to use and you can either print to .pdf or save your document as a protected file so that the redactions cannot be removed. The add-in can be downloaded here.
I don't have experience with redacting documents that are already in .pdf form, but you could try some of the suggestions in this article from Planet PDF.
E. Nolan
Cohen & Grigsby, P.C.
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