Sometimes PDFs must be redacted before submitting them externally for things like fundraising applications.

To redact a PDF on Linux follow the steps below.

First Time Configuration

  1. Click the down arrow next to ‘Yellow Highlighter’
  2. Click ‘Configure Annotations…’
  3. Click the ‘+ Add…’ button.
  4. Call the annotation ‘Redact’
  5. Change the type to ‘Text Markup’
  6. Set the appearance type to ‘Highlight’
  7. Set the colour to black
  8. Ensure the opacity is set to 100%
  9. Click ‘OK’ to close the creation pop-up
  10. Click ‘OK’ to close the configure annotations pop-up

Redacting PDFs

Making the selection

  1. Open Okular
  2. Press F6 to open the annotations bar (also accessible via Tools > Annotations)
  3. Click the down arrow next to ‘Yellow Highlighter’
  4. Click ‘Redact’ (the custom annotation setup earlier)
  5. Highlight the text you wish to redact

Generating the PDF

  1. Go to File > Print
  2. Click the ... next to ‘Output file’ and select where and what to save the redacted PDF as
  3. Click the Options >> button
  4. Click on the ‘PDF Options’ tab
  5. Ensure ‘Force rasterisation’ is checked - this is very important!
  6. Click ‘Print’

Warning

One you’ve clicked ‘Print’ go to where you chose to save it and try to copy text from redacted portion, nothing should copy. If it does you forgot to check ‘Force rasterisation’.

When attaching the PDF to an email make sure to attach the redacted PDF.