Redaction is the process of removing information from documents, typically confidential information, before final publication.  This is most popular in the Legal industry when names and personal information is removed from a file before it is made accessible by the public.  During the redaction process, words can be blacked out to make them unreadable and unsearchable

How to use redact:

1. Load, recognize and optionally proof and edit a document for redaction.
2. Save the recognition results to have a clean copy of the original document (recommended).
3. To mark for redaction by searching, click “Edit > Find and Mark Text”.
4. On the “Mark Text” tab, enter a search string and click “Find Next”. To mark this occurrence and move to the next one, click “Mark for redacting”; to skip the occurrence click “Find Next”.
5. Continue until there are no more occurrences. Perform new searches as desired.
6. Review the marking in the Text Editor. If the Mark Text toolbar is not visible, click “View > Toolbars” and enable “Mark Text”.
7. Click the “Mark for Redacting” button under the Text Editor tab, then select any other text strings you want marked.
8. Click the button again to finish marking. To remove a marking, select it and click the “Mark for Redacting” button again.
9. Save the OmniPage document (recommended), then export the marked recognition results to a convenient file type, e.g. PDF. You can pass this file to colleagues for confirmation of the marking.
10. When the marking is reviewed, open the OmniPage document (if necessary) and make changes as required.
11. To complete the redaction process, press the “Redact Document” button. A dialog box gives you the chance to have redaction applied to a copy. Choose this to get two documents, one marked for redaction and the new one completely redacted.  Then export these to store the marked version and distribute the redacted version.

Tips and suggestions:

• Office 2010:
  • After using the redaction feature in OmniPage and saving to Microsoft Word 2010, the redacted words may appear in a gray area, rather then in black.  This is a function of Microsoft Word 2010, which OmniPage is unable to modify.
• General:
  • Undo:
    • When mixing redaction and highlighting, the undo operation will only undo one change at a time.  If it is necessary to undo multiple changes, then we recommended to redact and highlight words in separate operations.