PDF for Lawyers

Removing PDF metadata & document markups using Acrobat

All digital documents contain metadata, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Metadata is just hidden information about a document, usually not very interesting information. But hidden information is hard to evaluate because, well...it's hidden. Some of that hidden information could be embarrassing and some could be downright damaging. PDFs are digital documents, and hence they contain metadata. Fortunately, Adobe Acrobat gives us a way to quickly find, and delete if we choose, that hidden data. The trick is to know where to look. Unfortunately, if you look under all of the menus in Acrobat you won't find a choice labelled 'Metadata.' The command you're looking for is called "Examine Document" which is under the DOCUMENTS menu choice. See the screenshot below:

Once you select this option your PDF will open a panel on the left hand side and start to run an analysis of the document, as shown by the red arrow marked #1 below. The #2 red arrow points to the types of information that have been found. You'll note that this document contains "metadata" and "bookmarks," which would be considered a type of "markup" in Acrobat. Comments and highlighting are also considered forms of "markup."

So the next question is, obviously: how do you remove the metadata and other markups? And the answer it found next to the red #3 arrow in the screenshot below. You just click on the button that is labeled "Remove."

But before we do that let's go back and look at the left panel again because you'll note that we have choices as to what we remove. That is, it's not an all-or-nothing deal. We can cherry pick what we want to have taken out. After all, we might want to leave the bookmarks in the document. So, these are the choices:

If we're happy with the choices that are selected (in this case all) then we click that "Remove" button and Acrobat will purge all of that information. But, the changes aren't locked in yet. If you look in the lower left hand area you'll see this important notification:

Once you save the document (or save it as a new document, if you prefer) then the changes will be locked in. So that's how you get rid of metadata, and comments and bookmarks. Frankly, I think it would have been better if Adobe had put these tools in the same area where you examine the document properties (which we talked about in the last two posts). It seems to me that once you shouldn't have to go to two different places to "examine the document." In Acrobat X the process is a little easier to find because the command is labelled "Remove Hidden Information" as the screenshot below depicts:

I hope that helps folks understand how to use this important tool in Acrobat. It's features like this that make me cringe when I hear lawyers recommending some less expensive alternative to Acrobat. Yes, I realize that Acrobat is a costly tool. But it's also a very powerful one, and versatile as well. Lawyers who want to have the options to sanitize documents and do all sorts of other important tasks should spend less time worrying about saving a few dollars and more time learning how to take advantage of all the useful features in Acrobat. What's that saying about "Penny wise and pound foolish"? Final note: The ability to remove metadata is part of Acrobat versions 8 and above.

Lightweight 'redaction' to clean up documents

Acrobat 9's redaction features are quite powerful, something that litigators very much appreciate when they have to produce documents with sensitive material. Below is an example of a page with a section that has been redacted.

This is the kind of redaction we expect to see when we use the Redaction tool. But that means it's also the only way we ever think that the redaction tool can be used. We never think about using the redaction tool to clean up stray marginalia, or ink blotches, that appear on a document. Why not? Probably because we think that the only way to use the Redaction Tool is to have it mark everything that we delete with strong colors, and with the word REDACTED superimposed.

Below is the same document. Let's say I inadvertently wrote the number for my barber on this important document.

Then I realize that I haven't scanned the document. Yikes! Okay, well I could paint some whiteout over the handwritten section,but that would be messy. And besides, who has whiteout anymore?

No friends, the solution here is to use the Redaction tool with some modified settings. And here's what you do.  First, apply your redaction in the usual way.  Which is to say, go to ADVANCED > REDACTION >MARK FOR REDACTION.  Then draw a box around the area with the Frank the Barber information. Once you've marked the area for redaction HOVER YOUR MOUSE over that area and RIGHT CLICK. You will then see something like the dialogue box below.

First, double click on the REDACTED FILL COLOR BOX, and the choose white instead of whatever color is the default.  Then UNCHECK the box that says USE OVERLAY TEXT. That's it.  Then go back and RIGHT CLICK the area marked for redaction and choose APPLY REDACTIONS.

Acrobat will prompt you to save the document as a new document (assuming that you need to preserve the old one, which is usually the case with regular redactions). Do whatever you need to do here. If the redaction is a 'clean up' and not important (that is, I'm not worried about needing the original later). I save over the original. 

The resulting document will look like this one below, free of any signs that I had inadvertently marked it up.

This trick can be used to clean up ink sploches, hole punch marks and pretty much anything. It's not really 'redaction' in the sense that we lawyers think of redaction. It's just making the document look prettier. But the redaction tool works really well for this purpose.

So next time you have a document with remnants of a coffee spill don't reach for the white out. Fire up your Redaction Tool! Now you know it's an all-purpose weapon in the fight for good looking documents, so use it!

Improved redaction in Acrobat X

In my initial quick review I didn't talk much about the redaction features in Acrobat X, mostly because I hadn't tested them. Here are some of the new redaction features that Adobe is touting:

• ability to repeat a redaction applied to a particular location across the entire document.  For example, if you have a word-processing code that is placed in the footer of a document and that document was converted to a PDF, and you want to remove it across the entire document, you can now do so quickly and easily.
• Search and redact now lets you pick how much of a pattern you want to redact. For social security numbers you can choose to have only the first 5 digits redacted, for example.
• Improvements in applying code sets, including the ability to apply multiple codes to a single redaction mark, and the ability to right-click to apply redaction codes.

I don't know if these improvements alone warrant an upgrade for most lawyers, but I suspect that many lawyers will appreciate these improvements enough to upgrade at least one of the copies of Acrobat in their office.  

Acrobat X is now available for download (on a 30 day free trial basis) and should be officially for sale on November 4th (i.e. tomorrow).