Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (version 22....) Hidden Text Discovered via Redact how can I remove?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 14, 2022
4 replies
2422 views

I was tasked with creating a fillable PDF form which will be posted to our website and used by anyone who visits and requires a privacy release form. I was provided an 'example' form to use as my starting point so that I would not have to start from scratch. I am not familair with using Adobe Acrobat at all but I am quite technical. I took the file I was provided and began editing all the contnet to turn it into 'our' form.

I worked on the form for two weeks making tons of edits and getting things 'perfect'. Now that the file content and layout are approved I was going through document properties to remove unwanted info. I stumbled across the redact tools to locate hidden data and so I ran it. The results showed metadata, file data, javascript, and hidden text. I clicked the option to remove and way more was removed than is acceptable. All the fillable boxes were removed, some of the font was changed to a different font, lines that are under each 'field' changed their thickness.

I have been searching high and low for any possible way to simply edit the document, locate the 'hidden' text and remove it. I am concerned that the file may be larger because of the extra text, or that it might not print for people correctly and other unknown issues. I tried un-checking all the items in my results except the hidden text but a message comes up telling me that fields and other content will still be removed and upon testing, nearly as much of the content gets screwwed up as when I removed all the suggested edits.

Is there any way to see the hidden text and remove it - aside from the redact settings?

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try67

Community Expert

You really should not be creating the file in Acrobat. It's not suited for that.

Create it in a different application and when done with the layout of the file convert it to a PDF, and then add the form fields, scripts, etc. to it. If any changes are needed do them in the original file and then create a new PDF from it and then use the Replace Pages command on the old file to keep the fields, scripts, etc. you already did in tact, while replacing the old static content with the new one.

Doing it all in Acrobat is asking for problems, just like the ones you've encountered now.

JR Boulay

Community Expert

After redacting a document Acrobat prompts to continue by deleting so-called hidden data.
This is what you should not have done.

Otherwise you can use the editing tool to delete text and images, it will do as well.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

T

Torifn_JRAuthor

Participant

Yes, I keep saving my file as a new version in between every new change I made, so I reverted back to a previous version to try to use the editing tools to locate the hidden text and delete it. I have been unable to determine any way to make the hidden text visible in order to see it, select it, and delete it.

On a total whim, I decided to convert my finished fillable PDF to Microsoft Word, once in Word it seemed it would need quite a bit of work to get it back to how I wanted, but again on a whim, and probably out of frustration, I decided to immediately convert the Word document back to a PDF Form.

I am extremely excited to report that the 'issues' that had shown up in the conversion from PDF to .DOC reversed themselves when I went back from .DOC to PDF and even better, I ran the Redact Text & Images, Santize Document Tools on the newly converted version and no more hidden text, and many of the other items previously 'found' for removal are gone now as well.

I am realizing that maybe Adobe doesn't really expect me to create documents using Adobe Acrobat, they only want me to convert files and tweak them. I am not a fan of making forms in Word but if that is the preferred method so that I can just convert it to a PDF then maybe that is what I will try next time.

Thank you all for the advice and help. It would still be nice to know if there is a way to see the 'hidden text' and remove it outside the redact/sanitize tools.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Why do you suspect there is hidden text?

T

Torifn_JRAuthor

Participant

I ran the Redact Text & Images, which brings up an option to 'santize the document' and since I am putting this on a public facing government website it seemed appropriated to try to remove any hidden text, corrupted code, or personally identifiable informaiton from the file so I ran it, but with the option to select which things get removed.

This brought up a results area with options to 'preview' the items the tool discovered and planned to remove from my file. In those results I saw metadata like the author's name, the 3rd party software company the previous document creator must have used, javascript 'language' that I could not decipher, 'form fields' which I would not want removed since this is a fillable form, and Hidden Text. Upon expanding the 'Hidden Text' section and clicking 'Preview' I was shown additional duplicated text that is hidden from view but is at the bottom of my document bleeding off the page by several inches. The content seems to be the addresses that are listed along the bottom inch of the document.

My assumption is that having this hidden text going off the edge of the page would cause issues for some printers or maybe cause other issues that I am not able to guess so I was hoping to figure out how to remove the hidden text but only the hidden text. I can't seem to find any way to 'view' and 'select' the hidden text to delete it - the only way I can find to delete it, is to run the tools, but they force you to delete the form fields and other file details that essentially 'break' my entire document.