How to Redact a PDF for Free on Windows 10/11

PDF redaction is commonly used for two main purposes. First, it helps to hide sensitive information like name, address, phone number, and other details. Secondly, it helps to hide irrelevant information in the PDF to let other people avoid distraction and focus on the relevant information only.

Although Adobe Acrobat is a popular PDF tool most people use, it does not provide free PDF redaction. This makes many users search for how to redact a PDF for free on Windows 10/11. Therefore, this guide is meant to assist those users and covers the four best tools to redact a PDF for free on Windows 11/10.

Part 1. 4 Easy & Free Methods to Redact a PDF in Windows 10/11

If you explore "redact PDF free Windows" on Google, you will come up with many tools that claim to provide free PDF redaction. However, the target should be to look for powerful, efficient, and free tools. To ease this hassle, we have below shortlisted the four best and free methods to redact a PDF on PC.

1. Using UPDF – The Best Option to Redact a PDF on PC

The first and the best method to redact a PDF for free on Windows 10/11 is UPDF. UPDF is a feature-rich PDF editor that offers powerful functionalities to redact single or multiple text and images with ease.

With UPDF, you can manually redact text/images or use its "Search & Redact" option to redact the text on multiple pages with a few simple clicks. Below are the key redaction features offered by UPDF:

• It allows you to manually mark specific text/images for redaction.
• It provides a dedicated "Search & Redact" feature to instantly redact specific text on multiple pages.
• It makes redaction permanent so no one can access the redacted text/image.
• It offers a click-based, user-friendly interface.
• It allows you to change the redaction properties, including fill, text, and border.

In short, UPDF offers the most advanced PDF redaction capabilities you can expect from a premium tool, but all of them are available to you for free. So, download UPDF and redact PDFs with its state-of-the-art functionalities.

Follow the below steps to learn how to redact a PDF for free on Windows 10/11 with UPDF:

Step 1. Download and launch UPDF. Click "Open File" to open the PDF you intend to redact.

Step 2. Click the "Redaction" icon from the left sidebar to enter the redaction mode. Afterward, highlight the text/image you want to redact and click the "Apply Redactions" icon.

Step 3. To redact a text on multiple pages, tap "Search & Redact" from the top and choose either Redact Pages or Redact Text.

Step 4. Type the text in the search bar and select the places in the document where you want to redact. Once done, click the "Mark" button. All the selected text will be redacted.

Step 5. Click the "Properties" option from the top bar to customize the redaction properties.

Step 6. Once the redaction is completed, click the "Apply" button from the top right corner to redact all the text and images permanently.

That's it! This way, UPDF offers the most intuitive and powerful platform to redact the PDF the way you want. The pros of using UPDF include:

• Easy to use with no learning curve.
• Instant redaction of specific text in multiple pages.
• Free to use.
• Handle large files proficiently.
• Plenty of other PDF editing features (discussed in Part 2).
• Easily customize redaction properties.

Overall, UPDF is a one-stop, complete PDF redaction tool you need to easily redact text/images for small to large PDFs. Therefore, download UPDF and experience an effortless way to redact PDF free on Windows 10/11.

2. Using Xodo Online Tool

Xodo is a web-based tool to redact a PDF free on Windows 10/11. It allows you to simply upload the PDF online, redact the text/image, and download the redacted PDF back. Follow the below steps to learn how to redact a PDF for free on Windows with Xodo:

1. Go to the Xodo website and upload the PDF you want to redact.

2. Select all the text/image areas you want to redact. Once done, click "Redact all".

3. Once the redaction is completed, click the "Download" button to download the redacted PDF.

This way, you can redact a PDF with the Xodo online tool. However, there are a few cons with Xodo worth knowing:

In short, Xodo is best to use for one time only per day.

3. Using PDF-Xchange Editor

PDF-Xchange Editor is a desktop-based tool that provides a click-based interface to redact content in a PDF. Follow the below steps to learn how to redact a PDF for free on Windows 10/11 with PDF-Xchange Editor:

1. Download and launch PDF-Xchange Editor and open the PDF you want to redact.
2. Click the "Protect" tap from the top and choose "Mark for Redaction".

3. Highlight all the text you want to redact.

4. Once all the text is highlighted, click "Apply All" from the top.

This way, all the selected text will be redacted.

Although PDF-Xchange Editor provides a simple way to redact a PDF free on Windows 11/10, it comes with a few limits, as follows:

In short, PDF-Xchange Editor is useful if you want to redact a few text/images in a small PDF.

4. Through AvePDF

AvePDF is another web-based platform to handle PDFs, including doing PDF redactions. It allows you to upload the PDF from the desktop, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other methods. Afterward, you can apply redaction to specific text/images and download the redacted PDF.

Follow the below steps to learn how to redact a PDF for free on Windows 10/11 with AvePDF:

1. Go to the AvePDF website and click Protect > Redact PDF.

2. Upload the PDF you want to redact.

3. Click "Add redaction marks" from the left sidebar and highlight all the texts you want to redact.

4. Once the redaction is completed, click "Apply all redactions" to make the redaction permanent.

5. Once done, click the "Save" button and then "Download" to download the redacted file.

This way, you can redact text and images in a PDF with AvePDF. However, there are a few cons with AvePDF as well:

In short, you can use AvePDF for doing a small number of manual redactions on a small PDF.

Looking at all the above four redact PDF free tools for Windows 11/10, UPDF shines as the best choice for multiple reasons. It offers the most intuitive way to redact PDF on Windows, as its feature-rich redaction functionality allows you to redact text/images manually or autonomously across multiple pages. Simply put, UPDF offers you premium PDF redaction features for free. So, download UPDF right now and get your PDF redacted instantly.

Part 2. UPDF: Beyond Just a PDF Redaction Tool for Windows

UPDF is not just the winner as the best redact PDF free tool for Windows 10/11; its capabilities go beyond it. It is a complete AI-driven PDF editor, which means it incorporates all the PDF editing-related features to handle PDFs effectively. Below is a quick glimpse of all the other top-notch features UPDF offers:

• Edit PDFs: It can intelligently add/edit text, images, links, backgrounds, and almost all the editable elements in a PDF.
• Annotate PDFs: It provides various annotation options, including highlighting, marking, underlining, drawing, adding comments/text boxes/stickers/stamps, etc.
• UPDF AI: It includes a powerful ChatGPT-powered AI assistant to get autonomous and effective summaries, translations, explanations, and specific question-answers about PDF content.
• Compress PDFs: It can shrink the size of the PDF depending on your quality choice.
• Convert PDFs: It can convert PDFs into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, RTF, HTML, XML, CSV, image, and text.
• OCR PDFs: Its state-of-the-art OCR technology can turn scanned PDFs into editable PDFs.
• Batch PDFs: It can batch process multiple PDFs to convert, combine, print, encrypt, etc.
• Organize PDFs: It can rearrange PDF pages, including adding, cropping, splitting, extracting, replacing, and deleting pages.
• Fill and Sign PDFs: It allows you to fill out PDF forms and sign PDFs electronically.

In short, UPDF is an all-in-one PDF editor that provides a central place to deal with all PDF-related activities. Therefore, it is highly recommended to download UPDF and have a full-fledged PDF redaction and editor tool on your desktop.

Part 3. FAQs about Redact PDFs

Q1. Why doesn't my PDF have the redact option?

There are many reasons that can lead to this problem, as follows:

• The PDF is authored by someone else.
• The security settings are enabled.
• You are viewing PDF in protected mode.
• Your PDF tool is malfunctioning.
• You are trying to redact text within active form fields.

It is recommended to use UPDF, as it offers the most powerful and intelligent way to redact PDFs and eradicate most of the above problems.

Q2. How do I redact a PDF in Word?

To redact a PDF in Word, you have to change it to a Word document first - and this means you are going to redact a Word and then turn it back to a PDF. Follow the below steps to do so:

1. Convert PDF to Word file first.
2. Open the converted Word file in MS Word.
3. Click "CTRL + H" to open the Find and Replace pop-up window.
4. Enter the text you want to replace in the "Find what" section and enter the new text in the "Replace with" section. Once done, click "Replace".
5. Select the new text, click the "Highlight" icon from the top, and highlight it in black color.
6. Save the file back as a PDF.

Q3. Does Microsoft Word have a redaction tool?

No, Microsoft Word does not have a dedicated redaction tool. To redact a text in Word, you can either add a black-filled rectangle shape over the text or highlight the text as black.

Conclusion

The need to redact a PDF can arise at any time. Therefore, having a reliable PDF redaction tool can be helpful to quickly redact a PDF. Above, we have discussed four methods to redact a PDF free on Windows 10/11. So, you can pick any of them depending on your preferences. However, UPDF seems the ideal pick here because it offers the most advanced PDF redaction experience for free with all the basic to advanced features you can expect. So, we will wrap up by recommending you download UPDF and easily redact or edit PDFs with it anytime.