Participant

Question

Redacting? quicker with a magic marker...

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
November 5, 2025
2 replies
127 views

Hi All,

Been using ABBYY for years for redacting pdfs but it has its limitations.
Curently roadtesting Adobe where we can have a text file for Adobe to use for the redactions, the keywords.

Im genuinely shocked and stunned that this product made it to market. It constantly crashes and / or the Apply button to redact is missing.
Restarted Adobe more times than I want to remember, repiar / reinstall hasnt solved it.
Cant be just me facing the issue where the bloody Apply button doesnt appear?

V

Vivacious_Giggles3636Author

Participant

Uninstalled everything, deleted all adobe files from all locations, ran the cleaner. The Apply button still disappears after trying to redact a pdf using keywords imported in a text file. This is using Acrobat pro, not seeing any support for pro, just enterprise and teams support. We are going to stick with Abbyy, the adobe feature to import a text file with keywords for redaction is great but it doesnt work.

Amal.

Legend

Hi there

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the trouble.

Have you started experiencing this issue recently or was this happening earlier as well? What is the version of the Acrobat Application and the OS you are using? Go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure its updated to the latest version 25.01.20813 Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also check if its an issue with a particular PDF file or with all the PDFs? Please try with a different PDF file and check.

If it still doesn't work, please share a small video recording of the steps you are taking and the issue as it occurs for more clarity.

~Amal

V

Vivacious_Giggles3636Author

Participant

Hi, we've been using ABBYY but decided to give Adobe a roadtest as it has the ability to import a text file containing words etc to be redacted rather than typing in individually, so just recently.

2025.001.20844 64bit version on Windows 11.
Happens with all PDFs, cant upload as its sensitive.

The redacted words do get highlighted but no results list on left hand side is produced plus the Apply button to proceed is missing, not greyed out, missing.

The Apply button does appear when disabling new Acrobat, however no results list is created on the left hand side but the Apply button is present.

So, there are 2 issues, firstly the redacted list from the search is missing using old or new UI.
Secondly, the Apply button is missing in the new UI, but not the old.

Hope it helps....

creative explorer

Community Expert

@Vivacious_Giggles3636 We don't have this problem, as one of my siblings had to borrow my computer, and had redact some of your medical charts that she wrote for whatever reason; she didn't have any issues with the redact tool.

Simply uninstalling can sometimes leave corrupted configuration files (like those from previous versions), the most robust solution is to perform a clean installation using Adobe Cleaner,

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/creative-cloud/apps/troubleshoot/diagnostics-repair-tools/run-creative-cloud-cleaner-tool.html

I would uninstall Acrobat with the Creative Cloud Desktop application to uninstall from your computer. After you have clean the old Adobe Acrobat with Adobe Cleaner, I would also manually delete the Adobe Acrobat Preferences that may survive the Adobe Cleaner. Once you deleted it, make sure to empty the trash as well then restart your computer.

Then use the Creative Cloud Desktop, app and this is crucial, download a fresh Adobe Acrobat, don't use the one you used in the past, that could be the issue and to reinstall the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. Don't worry, a new Adobe Acrobat preferences will be created.

Once you do all that, try and see if that 'Apply,' shows up

m

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Vivacious_Giggles3636Author

Participant

The redact apply button does apppear when performing simple redactions, but not when importing a text file containing the keywords. Will try the cleaning tool and report back, thanks.

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