How to redact a Word document
Word has no built-in redaction. Find and Replace changes the body text but misses pictures and leaves the old wording in tracked changes, and Inspect Document removes comments without touching the text. The Word redaction tool handles both in one pass.
Steps
- Open the .docx. Pages render in the preview much as Word shows them. Old .doc files need saving as .docx first.
- Allow the scan and wait for the Found list to fill in.
- Review. Click any highlight to switch it off or on. Text that is not on the page, such as comments and alt text, is listed under "Also in this file".
- Pick a style. "Black out" swaps each character for a block. "Replace with label" writes [NAME], [EMAIL] and so on, which keeps sentences readable.
- Download the redacted .docx.
Places Word hides text
- Headers, footers, footnotes and text boxes.
- Comments and the names of their authors.
- Tracked insertions and deletions, including text that was deleted but not accepted.
- Hyperlink addresses, which can contain email addresses or account IDs.
- Charts, and the spreadsheet stored behind each one.
- Pictures, including scanned signatures, and their alt text.
- Document properties: author, last modified by, company and template path.
All of these are scanned. Embedded files and chart data are removed, and the thumbnail Word saves of the first page is dropped.
Before sending
Open the download in Word, turn on All Markup under Review, and search for a couple of the removed names. Then check File, Info, Properties.