How to Redact in Word and Test the Final PDF

Yes, you can redact in Word, but you must delete the words. A black highlight or a black shape only covers the words, so they stay in the file. To redact a Word document, save a copy, delete the sensitive text, run Document Inspector, export a PDF, and then test the PDF.

The Microsoft documents that we read for this article show no Redact command in Word, so this is a manual process. Redaction here means that the words are gone from the file that you share. For the general meaning of the word, read what redacted means.

If you do not want to replace the words by hand, our free Word Redactor replaces the selected text in a .docx file, and your file stays on your device or secure network and never touches our servers.

Which version of Word do these steps use?

These steps use Word for Microsoft 365 on Windows. We took each menu name from a Microsoft support page that we read on November 3, 2026. The pages for the main steps also list Word 2021, Word 2019 and Word 2016. The pages on removing a link and on alt text do not list all of these versions.

Word menus change between versions. Word on a Mac, on the web and on mobile devices can have different menus. If your menu names are different, use the linked Microsoft page for your version.

Why do highlights and shapes not remove text?

A highlight is formatting on the text. A shape is a separate object on top of the text. Neither one changes the words. Microsoft's highlighting page shows how easily a highlight comes off: select the text, open Text Highlight Color and select No Color.

Do not depend on a PDF export to remove a cover. In its 2005 paper Redacting with Confidence, the US National Security Agency reports that with Adobe Distiller and PDFMaker, "images placed on top of text in MS Word will be copied verbatim to PDF with the same layout." The paper's steps were tested with Word 2000 and Acrobat 5.0 and 6.0. It is not about the Word export in step 5, and we did not test the current Word export. So delete the text before you export. The paper's main rule is that "information hidden or covered in a computer document can almost always be recovered."

Our test: a .docx file with a black highlight and a black shape

How we tested. Microsoft Word was not on the test computer. We used a script with the python-docx library to make a real .docx file with made-up data. In this file, "Jordan Sample" has a black highlight and black font color. "Account number 1234 5678 0000" is under a black rectangle. Then we read the file without Word. We did not open the file in Word, and we did not test copy and paste inside Word.

The XML in the file keeps the highlighted name as normal text. The highlight is only one setting next to it:

<w:r>
  <w:rPr><w:color w:val="000000"/><w:highlight w:val="black"/></w:rPr>
  <w:t>Jordan Sample</w:t>
</w:r>

The rectangle is a separate drawing in the same paragraph. The number is in its own normal text run, and nothing in that run points to the rectangle.

Two text-extraction tools then read the file. The macOS textutil command and the python-docx library returned the same text:

Test file. All names and numbers are made up.
The client is Jordan Sample.
Account number 1234 5678 0000

So both secrets stay in the file as text, and a tool can copy them out with no password and no special step. We also made a second file that never had these words, to show what clean output looks like. We did not test deletion. In that second file, the XML and the two tools found the label "[REDACTED]", and they did not find the name or the number.

We also looked at the first file in the macOS Quick Look preview. The rectangle covered the number, but the preview did not show the black highlight, so the name was easy to read. A cover that you see in one app can be missing in another app.

How do you redact in Word, step by step?

1. Save a copy

Keep your original private, and make all changes in a copy. Microsoft's Document Inspector page gives the same advice. Select File > Save As, type a new file name and save. The new name must not contain sensitive data, as the NSA paper also says.

2. Accept tracked changes and stop tracking

If Track Changes is on, Word does not take out a deletion. Microsoft's Track Changes page says: "Deletions are marked with a strikethrough." The No Markup view does not help, because Microsoft says that it "only temporarily hides changes."

Select the Review tab and go to Tracking.
In the Accept drop-down list, select Accept All Changes.
Make sure that Track Changes is off, so that your next deletions are real.

3. Delete the sensitive text

Microsoft's Find and Replace page gives these steps. A label in place of each word shows the reader that something was removed.

Select Home > Editing > Replace.
In Find what, type the name or number.
In Replace with, type a label such as [REDACTED].
Select Find Next, then Replace, so that you see each match. Replace All is faster, but you do not see the matches.

Find and Replace looks only for the words that you type. "Jordan Sample" does not match "J. Sample", so read the full document too. Look at the places that are easy to miss: headers, footers, footnotes, text boxes and pictures.

Old covers: if a highlight or shape is on sensitive text, delete the text. Then delete the shape too.
Pictures: delete a picture that shows sensitive information. Do not only crop it. Microsoft's crop page says that by default "the cropped areas remain part of the file, hidden from view."
Links: a link has visible text and a separate target. Do not assume that Replace changes the target. For each link, right-click it, select Edit Hyperlink and read the target in the dialog box: the Address box for a web or file link, and the E-mail address box for an email link. The Microsoft page gives these box names in its sections on creating a link, and we did not test this in Word. If the target shows sensitive data, right-click the link and select Remove Hyperlink.
Alt text: a picture or a shape can have a description that you do not see on the page. For each picture and shape that stays, right-click it, select View Alt Text and delete any sensitive data from the description.
Layout: if a label moves the text too much, the NSA paper suggests that you replace the text with copies of one character, such as Xs.

4. Run Document Inspector

This step comes from the same Microsoft page. It finds items such as comments, revision marks, document properties, the username, headers, footers, watermarks, hidden text and custom XML data.

Select File > Info.
Select Check for Issues, then Inspect Document.
In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the types of hidden content to look for, then select Inspect.
Read the results. Select Remove All next to each type that you want to remove.
Select Reinspect to run it again, or Close.

You might not be able to undo a removal, so use your copy. Remove All for headers and footers removes the information in them, so do not use it if you must keep them. Delete the sensitive parts yourself.

Document Inspector does not find covers. Microsoft says that it "cannot detect objects that are covered by other objects" and cannot detect text hidden by other methods, "for example, white text on a white background." So a clean result does not prove that step 3 is complete.

5. Export a PDF

Send the PDF and not the .docx file. Microsoft's PDF page gives these steps:

Select File > Save a Copy. If you did not save the file before, you can also use File > Save As.
Select Browse and choose a location.
In the drop-down list, select PDF.
Select More Options > Options. Under Publish what, make sure that Document is selected, and not Document showing markup.
Clear Document properties, so that they do not go into the PDF.
Select Save.

How do you test the PDF?

Open the PDF in our free Redaction Checker. It draws each page as an image and looks at the pixels behind each word in the text layer. If the area behind a word is one flat color, the tool reports the word as a leak. It also reports redactions that were marked but not applied, and earlier versions saved in the file, as leaks.

Comments, form values, attached files, text outside the page and metadata show as points to check. They are not counted as leaks, so the status can say "no leaks found" when they are in the file. Read the "Check" list even when the status says no leaks.

The checker runs in your browser. Your files stay on your device or secure network and never touch our servers. You can read the details in our privacy policy.

What we saw. We ran two test PDFs through the checker. We made these PDFs with the ReportLab library, because Word was not on the test computer, so they are not Word exports. They only show what the checker reports.

Words under black boxes: "1 page checked · 1 leak found." Under the title "Text under black bars", it listed the name and the account number from the test file.
No secret words in the file: this PDF never had the words. It has the label "[REDACTED]" in place of those words. The result was "1 page checked · no leaks found." It also showed the metadata of the file, such as the title and the author, as a point to check.

If the checker finds a leak in your PDF, go back to your Word copy, delete the words and export again. If you have only the PDF, use the PDF Redactor. It makes a new PDF from images of the pages, with the bars already in them, so the text under each bar is not in the new file. The new file has only images, so the checker cannot find text in it. Read every page and look at each bar.

A clean result does not prove that a PDF is safe. The checker has these limits:

Covers that are not flat: a picture, a gradient or a pattern on top of a word can give no report, because the area behind the word is not one flat color. A bar on part of a long word can also give no report.
Pictures and scans: it reads the text layer, so it cannot read words inside a picture or a scanned page.
Links, bookmarks and tags: it does not read link annotations, bookmarks or structure tags, so it does not read alt text.
Metadata: it reads the document information dictionary of the PDF. It does not read XMP metadata.
Your intent: it cannot know which words you meant to remove.

Read every page before you share the file.

This article explains how to use Word. It is not legal advice. If a court, a law or a contract sets rules for your document, follow those rules.