Apply redact function is greyed out, can't complete my redact request

[josephm46903451]

I'm trying to redact portions of a PDF document.  I used the redact tool to select multiple areas within the pages.  The tool successfully marks them, but when I try to complete the redactions by applying them, I note that the apply function is greyed out.  Not sure what I can do to allow the applying to happen.  Is the fact that "at least one signature requires validating" a possible blocking problem in this document?  Thank you.

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

Signatures are final. Editing after signing is not appropriate. That would kind of defeat the whole idea of signatures.

[josephm46903451]

I hear you, but I'm not trying to edit the text in a signed document, I'm just trying to redact certain portions of a signed document.  Isn't that what redacting is all about?  Sharing a document such as a signed contract with confidential portions hidden from view?

[useru52822277]

This answer fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of redaction. Signed documents are commonly redacted to remove information that is not releasable to certain audiences. Although *removal* of information from a signed document is inappropriate, redaction of non-releasable information within a signed document is neither inappropriate nor illegal.  In fact, the act of redaction itself serves to indicate to a reader that information was present but was not released to a specific audience.

The ability to redact a signed document should not be revoked by Adobe developers because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of redaction. This is a bug, not a feature.

[try67]

You misunderstand the purpose of a digital signature. It is meant to ensure the contents of the signed document are not edited, in any way. If you want to remove sensitive information from a file you have to do it before signing it. There's no way around it.

[Vladman]

I've been reading a lot lately on Adobe forums and it seems that as soon as Adobe has no factual solution they tend to verbalize their solution as an acceptance by describing a situation that fits with their bug. 

So here's the deal. A real life situation across the entire world of legal AND law enforcement community.

The investigator scans and submits the documents in their original format.

The investigator does not know what to redact since the investigation it's still pending. It is only months or even years after the investigation that the investigators will know with certainty who is going to be accused.

Thus the need to redact names of people who will not be accused. As I said this is happening months or even years after the first initial scan of the original document was made.

The above-mentioned communities work this way around the world.

I don't think that Adobe can say it can work the other way around.

The question is very important to answer.

The investigator scans the document or creates the PDF and applies its signature.

Then down the road, redaction marks are added by another team. Then you might have supervisors making quality control of the redaction marks and only then the final marks are applied.

All these steps will not alter information that is contained in the document, redaction only replaces information being disclosed but leaving the space that was occupied by that information.

The signature needs to be still valid and act as a witness (log) that no pages were removed nor text altered.

So how can we apply redaction marks after signature?

[try67]

But text was altered. It was removed from the file, and can't be put back. How would you know that only names were removed? Maybe crucial bits of other information were also removed when the file was redacted?

Imagine the following sentence: "I, XXXXXX, witnessed that John doe killed XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX."

Now, we can assume that those are just names of people, but maybe there's more there that we can no longer see.

Maybe they witnessed that the killing was in self-defense? This is a simplistic example, but it goes to show that once you allow information to be removed or edited in any way, the signature on it becomes worthless, as you don't know in what ways the original differs from the redacted version.

What you're describing is not only technically not feasible (in a PDF file, at least), it's also very dangerous in terms of liability and reliability. If that's how the legal system works, then it has a serious problem, in my opinion. The only way I could envision it working is if all the people who signed a file will validate that their signature still applies to the redacted version, but that's no different from simply signing it again.

PS. I don't speak for or work for Adobe, in case you're going to say that I just try to "make excuses for their bugs"...

[darryllcox]

that is meaningless if not notarized or witness so that example is futile.

[wernert74]

This answer misses the point completely (even though it may be technically correct). Most folks want to use the redact feature to hide some sensitive information from downstream parties. The parties that signed the document still have the copy of the original doc and can always refer to that should any dispute arise. I'm OK to say the doc was signed, but redactions was applied post signature. this is common practice. Just look at what is happening in government where documents are released to the Press, but sensitive info is hidden. This does not invalidate the original, but it does mean that you do not have the privilege to read the whole thing.

Semantics about invalidating the signature is not helpful and is just argumentative.

I have purchased a trial subscription to Adobe DC Pro, but will not cancel this because this was the main purpose for which I wanted to use it... i.e share docs but remove privileged content... I will find another way / another application since Adobe is missing the mark on this completely.

[Test Screen Name]

Redaction is very definitely editing. It would be easy to change the meaning of a contract by deleting words!

This leasehold reverts to the owner after two hundred

years and one day.

Now redact the word hundred...

You can't keep it signed and redact. You have to destroy/remove the signature, if it will let you (generally won't).

[josephm46903451]

Thanks.  I would get your point if I wanted to delete or erase the word "hundred" above, but if I were to clearly *redact* (ie block out) the word, so it looked like this...

This leasehold reverts to the owner after two hundred

years and one day.

Imagine that the word hundred had a dark highlight over it (a redaction) instead of a strikethrough, so you could clearly see someone took out a word.  Sorry to be repetitive, but isn't that what redaction is all about?  Clearly showing you have removed portions of a document?

[try67]

What would be the point of signing a document if someone came later and changed it, even if it's visible that they did? You're altering the signed document, and therefore voiding the signature. So a Digital Signature doesn't allow to do that in the first place, as it should.

[Test Screen Name]

The point about digital signatures is that any change, even an invisible one, is forbidden and/or detected. Redaction is not a special case.

[reecie2704]

I understand what both parties are trying to say, but I’m the instances where you may release parts of a signed contract, but wish to keep information such as pricing confidential, there is cause to REDACT a signed document. While your PDF still contains editable fields, it cannot be redacted after signature. PRINT your document to ADOBE PDF (rather than a printer) so that it flattens the layers in the PDF, then you can use the redact feature on the “printed” copy.

[Bernd Alheit]

Info: The "printed" copy is not more signed.

[Vladman]

please see comment of:  useru52822277     7-Jun-2018 11:57 AM

[tomv255820]

It turns out to be very easy. Drag a signed PDF from Acrobat Pro to JPEG or another image format: File > Export to > Image > JPEG. Then use Preview or a similar program to export it back to PDF, or in Acrobat Pro do: File > Create > Combine files into a single PDF.  Then the security features of signing are gone and you can use all the Redact tools.

Given the new legal rules on protecting PII (Personal Identifiable Information), the risk of identity theft and hacking, and the earlier issues of confidentiality on this thread, sometimes signed PDFs have to be redacted as a mandatory requirement of law or responsible protection of others' PII, and not for nefarious reasons.

[sampenguin]

Or if you want to retain text, I found that exporting to Word format, then creating a PDF from the .doc file removes the locking, while leaving the visual signatures in place. Adobe should really allow redactions post signatures with warnings, this is ridiculous and an obvious use case.

[martinf81318039]

I find myself in the exact same situation, having decided for once to stop printing, redacting and scanning contracts to the favor of actual modern tools. Redacting part of a signed document is an actual legal requirement in my case (and likely in the original post as well). It has nothing to do with its validity as a signed agreement, no court of law would ever accept to enforce a redacted document. You would however be found in breach of confidentiality for having sent a copy of your client's contract to, say, your insurer, without first obfuscating PII or any trade secret that may be contained. I find this whole thread quite unhelpfull as the request to redact a signed document is neither nefarious, illegal or unethical. 
There is no logic behind the argument of preventing redacting of a signed document. Preventing editing, changes, copy/past and whatever is of course a basic requirement, but redacting is none of those things and preventing it is actually a much higher risk than allowing it. At least in my 2 cents.

[Thom Parker]

This is a technical issue, not a legal one.  A digital signature, as opposed to a simple written signature, encodes content within the document into a data block that is unique for both the signing certificate and the document. Changing the document, changes the encoding of this data block, which invalidates the signature. See, the whole point of a digital signature is to guarentee the integrity of the document. It has nothing to do with IP or legal requirements. It's purely a technical tool. 

[martinf81318039]

A fair explanation, and a better one than the "unethical" answers 🙂 But the problem remains, just like with an actual piece of paper, we should be able to garantee the authenticity of a document while still being able to redact part of it, without breaking out the ol' Sharpie and ruler...

[Thom Parker]

That is a legal workflow issue. So to dig into it. What exactly constitutes aughenticity?  If that was known, then perhaps we could come of with a technical solution. For example, resigning the PDF? Say you had a clear audit path from the original signed doc, to the modified doc, to the signed modified doc. The orignal signature would still be valid for the pre-modified doc, and the new signature would be valid for the post modified doc. I'm sure some variation of this could be worked up. But it would require a special tool. And you'd have to guarentee that the methodology couldn't be spoofed. For example, have a set of valid modifications, such as redaction only. 

[Milkor]

It is not appropriate for Adobe or any user in this thread to decide what is appropriate for other users when dealing with signed documents and redacting information. There are many perfectly valid reasons why someone would want to redact an electronically signed PDF. The question here is not whether one should or should not redact a signed PDF, it's about HOW to redact a signed document; there are a lot of responses that are answering different questions and not the one that was actually asked.

My use case:

I had to provide a contract from a previous engagement as part of a background check. The background checkers did not need to know my salary, just that I had worked at that place. The original contract came as a PDF from Docusign. I did not need to provide the electronic signature in the original PDF. I could not redact the salary info from that PDF because of this restriction. 

I know this won't fit everyone's needs, but it's the best I could come up with for a situation like mine.

What I did:

I'm on a Mac, so Windows users will need to do something different, which I've noted below:

1. I opened the original contract PDF and Saved As _ver_2.0 (so that I would not risk damaging the original).
2. I opened _ver_2.0 in Mac's Preview app (Windows users can find another PDF viewer app, not Acrobat, for this part; there are many free ones available that can do what I did in the next step).
3. In Preview, I clicked Print > PDF > Save as PDF and applied the name _ver_2.1.
4. I opened _ver_2.1 in Acrobat DC Pro, applied the redactions (the Apply button was active).
5. Acrobat DC Pro appended _redacted to the filename. The output looked great.
6. I sent the _ver_2.1_redacted.pdf to the background checkers.

It seems that the Mac Preview app did away with the e-signature stuff when generating the new PDF, so, if you're on Windows, be sure to test this to make sure that the Windows PDF app you choose can create a new PDF out of an existing one and that the signature stuff does not get saved into the new one.

Avoid this:

Don't save the original PDF as jpg or PNG; the output looks horrendous. My method preserves the original look.

To Adobe Product Managers and Developers:

Yes, it's true, there are cases where another party needs to verify the authenticity of the original document. But there are also use cases where the authenticity does not need to be proven, and there are cases where the authenticity must be preserved AND sensitive details need to be redacted.

The solution you designed is clumsy and inflexible. It only takes one use case into account and assumes that everyone is going to work that one way; that was a faulty assumption.

Instead, add these options:

1. The ability for users to strip out the signature if they no longer need it.
2. The ability for users to preserve the signature AND redact content; make sure that it saves as a different filename so the original is not overwritten. Show a warning to the user when doing this. Show a pop-up to the recipient when opening these kinds of files that the signature is still valid but certain content has been redacted for confidentiality, and contact the originator if there are questions about the redactions.

The name of the game is flexibility, adaptability, and ENABLING the user, not restricting users' choices and assuming that Adobe knows best.