How to Redact in Word (So the Text Is Really Gone)

Word has no redaction tool. To redact a Word document, delete each sensitive word and type a placeholder such as [REDACTED] in its place, then accept all tracked changes, delete comments, remove personal information from the file, and save as PDF. Black highlighting, black shading and hidden text only change how the words look. The words stay in the file.

Here is what that difference looks like once the file leaves your hands. Press copy with the black highlight on, then switch to deleting and replacing.

What we found inside six “redacted” Word files

A .docx file is a zip folder of XML. We built six versions of the same short letter, each hiding a name, a (fake) Social Security number and a test card number in one of the ways people try in Word, using the same XML that Word writes for each feature. Then we looked inside each file, and converted each one to plain text with macOS’s built-in textutil, the way any program that opens the file would read it.

Three things stand out:

• Hidden text isn’t hidden from software. Word’s Hidden font setting only stops the text being displayed. textutil printed all three values as if nothing was hidden, and the file format itself notes that an app can have settings to show hidden text.
• Track Changes keeps what you delete. With tracking on, a deletion is stored as a deletion, text and all, so it can be reviewed and rejected. Anyone who opens the file and shows all markup reads the original name. Inside the file it looks like this:

<w:del w:author="Editor" w:date="2026-10-06T00:00:00Z">
  <w:r><w:delText>Jane Q. Example</w:delText></w:r>
</w:del>

• The author field names the person. Every file kept “Jane Q. Example” as its author until we changed it. If you are redacting someone who also wrote the document, the file still says who they are.

Want to check it yourself? Download our black-highlight test file and tracked-changes test file, open them in Word, and remove the highlight or turn on All Markup.

How to redact in Word, step by step

Work on a copy, so you keep the original.

1. Find every occurrence. Press Ctrl+H on Windows, or choose Edit › Find › Replace on a Mac, to open Find and Replace. Search for each name, number and email you need to hide. To catch number patterns, turn on wildcards (Windows: More › Use wildcards; Mac: the gear icon › Advanced Find & Replace, then the expand arrow). [0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4} finds every number shaped like a US Social Security number; search again for [0-9]{9} to catch ones typed without dashes. Search for every form a name takes, too: first name alone, surname alone, initials, a nickname, an email address or username.
2. Replace, don’t cover. Replace each one with a placeholder such as [REDACTED] or XXXX. A fixed placeholder also hides how long the original was, which a black bar the width of the word does not.
3. Accept all tracked changes. Go to Review › Accept › Accept All Changes, then turn Track Changes off. Do this after your replacements, or the originals stay in the file as deletions.
4. Delete comments. Go to Review › Delete › Delete All Comments in Document. Comments often quote the very thing you are removing.
5. Remove personal information.
   • Windows: File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document, then select Remove All next to comments and revisions, document properties and personal information, and hidden text. Microsoft advises running it on a copy, because Undo may not bring back what it removes.
   • Mac: Word for Mac has no Document Inspector, so do its job by hand. Turn on Word › Preferences › View › Hidden text, then find and delete any hidden text. Open File › Properties and clear the author, company and any custom fields. Then tick Tools › Protect Document › Remove personal information from this file on save (also under Review › Protect › Protect Document). That option blanks the author, manager and company and renames comment and revision authors to “Author”, but it doesn’t delete comments or tracked text, which is why steps 3 and 4 come first.
6. Check what’s easy to miss. Read through headers, footers, footnotes and text boxes, and look at any images that contain text, such as a scanned signature or a screenshot. Find and Replace can’t change text inside a picture.
7. Search again. Re-run your Find for each name and number after accepting changes and inspecting. It should find nothing.
8. Save as PDF. File › Save As (or Export) and choose PDF. Send the PDF, not the .docx, unless the reader needs to edit it.

Then check the PDF before you send it: open it, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A), copy and paste into a plain text editor, and search for each redacted word. Our free redaction checker does the same in your browser. The full checklist is in our PDF guide.

Pictures, crops and screenshots

Text inside an image is out of reach of Find and Replace, and Word’s picture tools have their own trap. Cropping a picture in Word doesn’t delete the part you cropped. Word keeps the whole image in the file so you can un-crop it later, which means anyone can drag the crop handles back out and see the full picture.

• To hide part of an image, edit it outside Word first: black out or blur the area, save it as a new image, then insert that instead. Our free screenshot redactor finds names, emails and numbers in a screenshot and burns solid boxes into it.
• If you did crop pictures, select one and go to Picture Format › Compress Pictures, tick Delete cropped areas of pictures, and apply it to all pictures in the document.
• A black shape drawn on top of a picture in Word is just another object on the page. It can be moved, and the picture under it is untouched.

Other places Word keeps the original

• Version history. If the document lives in OneDrive or SharePoint with AutoSave on, every earlier version is kept, and anyone you share the file with may be able to open them. Redact a downloaded copy, or share the exported PDF instead.
• Embedded spreadsheets and charts. A chart pasted from Excel can carry the whole workbook behind it, including rows you never showed. Paste it as a picture instead.
• Links and alt text. A link’s visible text can be redacted while its address still contains a name or an email, and image descriptions (alt text) are easy to forget.
• The file name. “Smith-settlement-final.docx” undoes the rest of your work.

If you need to send the Word file itself

Once you have checked it, a PDF exported from a cleaned-up document is safer to send: what you see is all there is. If the reader needs the editable .docx, go one step further than the checklist: after redacting, select everything, copy it, and paste it into a brand-new blank document, then save that. The NSA’s 2005 guide, Redacting with Confidence, recommends the same move, and so does the D.C. Circuit’s redaction guide, because a new document starts without the old one’s revision history, comments and properties. Check the new file’s author before you send it, since Word fills it in from your Word user name or the account you are signed in with.

Why black highlighting fails, even as a PDF

Try black highlighting in Word and the first thing you will notice is that it doesn’t even look redacted: with the font colour on Automatic, Word switches the text to white so it stays readable on the dark highlight. People then set the font to black as well, and now it looks redacted. But the words are still in the document, and when you save as PDF the highlight is drawn as a black rectangle behind text that is still there. In our six-method PDF test, a page with text highlighted in black and saved as PDF gave up all three hidden values to a plain copy and paste. We made that test page in a browser rather than in Word, but the mechanism is the same: the PDF keeps the text and draws a box behind it.

Courts know this too. The US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit warns filers in its redaction guide that word processors keep data that can reveal deleted or changed text even after conversion to PDF, and that white text on a white page hides nothing.

If you only have the PDF

You can’t go back to Word to fix a PDF someone else made. Use a tool that removes the text from the PDF itself. Our free Redact PDF tool finds emails, phone, card and ID numbers automatically, lets you drag over anything else, and rebuilds each redacted page so there is no text left under the boxes. It runs in your browser, so the file is never uploaded. Adobe Acrobat Pro and Preview on a Mac also have real redaction tools; our PDF guide covers all three.

What courts require you to redact

If you are filing in a US federal court, Rule 5.2 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure limits what a filing may show:

• only the last four digits of a Social Security or taxpayer ID number,
• only the year of someone’s birth,
• only the initials of a minor,
• only the last four digits of a financial account number.

So “SSN: XXX-XX-6789” is fine in a federal filing. The rule lists some exemptions, and lets you file an unredacted copy under seal alongside the redacted one. Many state courts have similar rules; check your court’s own guidance.

Word won’t do any of this for you. Deleting and replacing is the only method that leaves nothing behind, because the text is no longer in the file.