Redactions allow you to withhold or remove confidential information from documents. Everlaw's redaction tools allow you to redact the content and metadata of individual files or sets or files. You can also search for documents with applied redactions using the redaction search term. Learn more about searching for redactions here.
Use this article to learn how to:
- Redact information from all document types, including spreadsheets and media files
- Configure your redactions so they appear exactly as you want when produced
- Save time on redacting confidential or sensitive information
Note
To learn how to redact multiple documents at once, see our article on Batch Redactions.
Required permissions: Create or Admin permission on Redactions
Redact the image view of a document
You can redact document contents while reviewing a document using a highlighter or by text selection.
Redaction Highlighter
The redaction highlighter lets you draw a box to cover the information you want to redact. To use the redaction highlighter:
-
Select the redaction
button on the toolbar. The selected highlighter has a darker background once selected.
- You can also use the keyboard shortcut: "r"
- The redaction highlighter also appears in the Native and Text views, but redacting by highlighter is only available in PDF view, as well as native view for spreadsheets and media files.
- To redact by highlighter, place the cursor anywhere on the document and hold while dragging the mouse. A box of transparent black will appear over your selected area.
- After production, this selected area will not be visible, and the text below the redaction will not be OCR’d.
- [Optional] Add a redaction stamp or note.
- Continue adding redactions to the document.
- When you are done, toggle the redaction tool off, either by clicking the button or pressing "r" again on your keyboard.
Delete highlighter redactions
You can delete highlighter redactions individually:
- Select the redaction to bring up the preference panel.
-
Select the trashcan
to delete the redaction.
Inverse redactions
To redact most of your document, use inverse redaction mode. Inverse redaction allows you to select what not to redact instead of what to redact. In this mode, Everlaw redacts everything outside of the box you draw instead of redacting the content inside the box.
- You can create as many inverse redactions on a single page as needed. Inverse redactions can overlap with each other and with regular redactions.
- On production, regular redactions, including persistent hit redactions, will take precedence over inverse redactions, so the final produced document will always display the maximum redacted space. This reduces the risk of accidentally exposing parts of the document meant to be redacted.
To use inverse redaction mode:
- Select the dropdown arrow next to the redaction button in the toolbar.
- Select Inverse redact. You can also enter inverse redaction mode with the keyboard shortcut “e”.
-
Draw inverse redactions in the same way you draw regular redactions. When you start the process of clicking-and-dragging to create an inverse redaction, a full-page redaction is automatically applied. You don’t have to create a full-page redaction before drawing an inverse redaction.
- If you want to apply a full-page redaction without creating an inverse redaction, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+r or click on the page while in inverse redaction mode.
- If you want to apply a full-page redaction without creating an inverse redaction, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+r or click on the page while in inverse redaction mode.
- Click anywhere on the redacted space to bring up the redaction stamp dialog. From this dialog, you can add a stamp or a note to the full-page redaction surrounding the inverse redaction.
You can use inverse redaction mode in native spreadsheets, which mirrors the functionality described above. Inverse spreadsheet redactions are applied to full-sheet redactions rather than full-page redactions. You can learn more here about spreadsheet review and redactions.
Delete an inverse redaction
To delete an inverse redaction:
- Click anywhere inside the inverse redaction. A small trash can appear in the lower right corner of the inverse redaction.
- Select the trash can to delete the inverse redaction.
Full page redaction
To redact many pages of a long document:
- Select the dropdown arrow next to the redaction button in the toolbar
- Select Redact page in the redaction dropdown menu. A box opens.
- Choose to redact the current page, all pages, or a custom range of pages of the document.
- [Optional] Add a stamp or a note to be applied to the redaction.
- Select Redact pages.
On production, full-page redactions are burned into the document.
- Full-page redactions take precedence over regular redactions, which take precedence over the spaces carved out when doing an inverse reaction. Therefore, regular redactions and their stamps are always obscured by a full-page redaction, as seen in the example below. However, regular redactions still appear over inverse redactions.
Everlaw adds white space at the bottom of the produced document in order to display the Bates number (as well as any other endorsements selected on production). This white space also appears on the top of the document if you choose to put the Bates number or endorsements at the top of your document. This white space is not part of the original image; the original image is always completely obscured by the full-page redaction.=
Delete a full-page redaction
- Click anywhere on the page.
-
Select the trash can.
- Deleting a full-page redaction automatically deletes any inverse redactions cut out of it
Text Selection Mode
You can redact text in text selection mode, but not images or blank space. To redact text this way:
- Select the text selection
button.
- Click and drag over the text you want to redact.
A pop-up panel appears with six options. - To redact, you can choose to Redact the current instance of this text
or Redact all instances
- If you choose to redact all instances and want to add a redaction stamp to each, select the gear
button and choose your stamp before you make the redaction.
- Redacting all instances creates a redaction everywhere that this text appears within this document
- If you choose to redact all instances and want to add a redaction stamp to each, select the gear
-
If you choose Redact the current instance, an options panel pops up. You can apply a note and/or redaction stamp to your redaction.
- If you redacted all instances and want to apply a note to each instance, you can navigate between instances of this redaction in the Hit highlights panel.
Partial PII Redaction
When you redact personally identifying information (PII) using the text selector, you can choose full redaction or from three different partial redaction formats: username, username except first character, or domain.
By default, the text is redacted fully. To redact it only partially:
- Before you select redact
, select the gear
(just as you would to add a redaction stamp).
- Click into the PII Redaction Type field.
- Select your partial redaction type.
- Select to Redact the current instance of this text
or Redact all instances
Delete a text selection redaction
You can delete text selection redactions individually or in bulk.
To delete one individually:
- Select it in the document to open the options panel.
- Select the trashcan button.
To delete in bulk:
- Select the string in the Hit highlights panel.
- Choose remove all instances of this redaction
.
Apply Redaction Stamps
Project admins may create standardized redaction stamps that can be used to note why particular content is redacted. Admins may also allow users to create their own stamps. You add redaction stamps in the options panel. To access the panel and add a stamp:
- Open the panel by selecting a redaction.
- Select from the list to apply a pre-created stamp or create a custom stamp, which can be seen and applied by other reviewers on the project as well.
- Note: The option to create a custom stamp is dependent on a permission determined by a Project Administrator
- If your project has more than 10 stamps (including project and custom stamps), up to 3 recently used stamps are shown at the top of the list of available stamps.
- The applied stamp is overlaid on the redaction.
- Small redactions that cannot fit the size of the full stamp receive an abbreviation, identified after the stamp name and a hyphen
- If a redaction window is too small for the abbreviation, the stamp is hidden. The stamp is saved as a component of the redaction, but not applied. Since the stamp is still considered applied in the review window, the stamp becomes unhidden if you resize the redaction to be large enough to display it.
- Note that very small redactions below a certain pixel level are not considered redactions in your production. Hidden stamps are not produced.
Default redaction settings
Redactions have no stamp by default, but you can set default stamp:
- Press the caret next to the redaction tool
- Select default redaction stamp settings.
- Choose the default setting.
- Select Submit.
There are 3 options:
- No stamp: This is the current default. New redactions have no stamp applied by default.
- Redaction stamp: Choose a specific redaction stamp to apply to new redactions created on the review window using the redaction tool.
- Last applied redaction stamp: The last applied stamp is applied. For example, if you make a redaction with stamp A, then make a new redaction, this new redaction will have stamp A as well. If you then change any redaction to stamp B, the next new redaction will have stamp B. The last applied stamp is reset on every new review window session to no stamp, so closing and re-opening the review window resets the last applied redaction stamp to the default of no stamp.
The default redaction stamp settings are saved for every user on a per-project basis, so you can have a different default redaction stamp setting for every project if needed.
Note: the default redaction stamp setting on hit highlights, as well as batch redactions, stays as “No stamp” regardless of default redaction stamp settings.
Redact from the Hit Highlights tab
You can learn how to redact from the Hit Highlights tab in our article on using Hit Highlights.
Redact Metadata
To redact metadata from the review window:
- Select the redaction highlighter
in the toolbar.
- Navigate to the Metadata panel. The redaction button is beside all metadata fields with a value.
- Select the button to redact the corresponding field.
- To assign a stamp or add a note to the redaction, select the redaction to make the annotations popup appear.
- To delete the metadata redaction, select the trash can in the lower right corner of the popup.
Note: If you delete a metadata value that has a metadata redaction, the metadata redaction is also be removed. You cannot have a metadata redaction over an empty metadata field.
Important
If a document contains redactions in the metadata, then the native is suppressed at the time of production. For example, if you apply native redactions to a spreadsheet and also redact the Author or Date Sent metadata in the same document, the document is not produced with a native file.
Metadata redaction suggestions
During review, you may redact a value from the body of a document, but forget to redact that same value in the metadata. To prevent this, Everlaw offers metadata redaction suggestions for both highlight and text-selection redactions.
When you redact the body of a document, Everlaw checks if any values in the document’s metadata match the text of you redaction. If the text is found, Everlaw may suggest that you redact it in the metadata as well.
Here are some additional details about metadata redaction suggestions:
- If you include a stamp on your content redaction, and you choose to redact the identical metadata from the redaction suggestion, the stamp is applied to your metadata redactions as well.
- Redaction suggestions are usually supported for Text, AddressFrom, AddressList, and Number fields. This means that you can expect to see redaction suggestions for metadata such as email parties, email subjects, document custodians, Bates numbers on previously produced documents, and more.
- Redaction suggestions are only supported if the redacted area includes text embedded in the image, which is the standard for data processed on Everlaw.
- Redaction suggestions are based on exact text matches between the content and metadata redactions. This means that if you have redacted “John Smith” on an email document, but the email is from “John Smith and Jane Doe,” then the From metadata field will not be suggested for redaction.
- Similarly, because dates appear in so many formats, DateTime fields are never suggested for redaction.
Redact a spreadsheet
By default, spreadsheets uploaded natively to Everlaw do not have a PDF view. You can redact spreadsheets from the native view, instead. Here is some additional information about redacting spreadsheets:
- You can redact as many cells as you’d like from the native view of a spreadsheet, down to the individual cell level. This allows you to produce native versions of spreadsheets, without needing to image them, while still redacting sensitive information.
- Redacted cells turn gray in redaction mode or while selected
- Redacted cells are opaque, revealing redactions stamps, when you exit redaction mode. This is how the redactions appear when the document is produced.
- Embedded images and charts on spreadsheets cannot be redacted.
- If you choose a redaction stamp, each redacted cell will be stamped with the chosen stamp or abbreviation.
- Note: you cannot redact spreadsheet comments using Everlaw's native spreadsheet viewer. Imaged spreadsheets do not display natively applied comments.
- Note: You cannot redact the native view of a spreadsheet if some tabs are encrypted
To redact a spreadsheet in the native view:
- Press the shortcut key “r” or select the redaction
button.
-
To redact, you can click:
- on individual cells
- and drag your cursor over a group of cells
- on a row or column heading to redact the entire row or column
- the top left corner of the spreadsheet, where the row and column headings intersect, to redact the entire sheet
You can also redact spreadsheets using hit highlights. The redaction options in the hit highlights tab are the same as for other document types.
- The first redaction option allows you to redact the currently highlighted instance of the term.
-
Redact all instances allows you to redact all instances of the term that occurs in the document.
- Spreadsheet redactions via Redact all instances are limited to 5000 redactions across all pages of the spreadsheet, including dependent redactions. If your selected term will create more than 5000 redactions, you will not be able to run the redaction.
- Select the gear button to see the current redaction options for stamps and partial redaction format when applicable.
- By default, redactions are set to have no redaction stamp and full redactions.
- Both redact current instance and the redact all instances apply redaction stamps and partial redactions according to the redaction options.
Each time you make a redaction, a redaction options panel appears. This panel allows you to apply redactions stamps. See Apply Redaction Stamps to learn more about this. Here is some additional information about the redaction options:
- If the cell you redacted contains a value based on a formula, the control panel shows the cell’s original value as well as the formula
- If there are dependent cells, you can decide how to redact them. A dependent cell is one that uses values or calculations from another cell. Everlaw detects formula dependencies as well as pivot table dependencies
- Close the redaction control panel by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner or selecting Done. Clicking on a redacted cell will reopen that cell’s control panel
- To delete individual redactions, select the trash can in the bottom right hand corner to delete individual redactions
To delete or hide all cell redactions on a spreadsheet, click the dropdown on the redaction tool and select Delete all redactions. Alternatively, activate or click on the Annotations tab and navigate to Native Redactions. Click on the eye button to hide all redactions on your spreadsheet while you are still viewing the document. Click on the trash can to delete all cell redactions.
Produced spreadsheets on Everlaw are cut off at the last row or column of content. Therefore, if you redact a full column or row at the end of your sheet, those redactions are hidden on production.
Native document, redacted column
Produced version of the document, redacted column is hidden
Redact dependent cells
When redacting a cell, the redaction tool considers cell dependencies. A dependent cell is one that uses values or calculations from another cell. Everlaw detects formula dependencies as well as pivot table dependencies.
By default, dependent cell redactions are turned on, but you are able to turn them off. To do so, de-select the Enable dependent redactions checkbox. If you turn them off, you are not prompted to configure dependent cell redactions, and dependent cells are not redacted.
- Note: Redacting complex pivot tables referencing external databases or other complex data sources is not currently supported. For example, if you have a list of values and one of the cells contains a formula referencing other cells, the cell that contains the formula is dependent on the other cells referenced.
If you redact a cell that references another cell, the options panel shows the total number of dependent cells and give you additional options for redacting them.
You can choose to:
- Redact the dependent cells completely
- Replace the dependent cells with a formula
- Keeping the dependent cells' original values displayed (without the formula).
Any option you choose is applied to all dependent cells. By default, they are redacted completely.
Let's use this example below to illustrate the redaction of dependencies. This spreadsheet displays earnings from a lemonade stand over the course of the week. It also includes
- The total earnings that week
- The average earnings that week
- The total weekday earnings
- The average weekday earnings
- The total weekend earnings
- The average weekend earnings
Cell B9 is the "total" of all earnings that week. It is a dependent of all cells that include earnings, B2-B8. Similarly, since B11 is the sum of all weekday earnings, it is a dependent of cells B2-B6.
Let's redact Wednesday's earnings, cell B4. B4 has four dependent cells: B9 (total earnings), B10 (average earnings), B11 (weekday sum), and B13 (weekday average). These cells all include formulas that depend on the value of cell B4.
For any selected redaction, fully redacted cells are gray and partially redacted cells have an orange border. Replacing a dependent cell’s contents with a formula or keeping the cell’s original value are partial redactions.
If no selection is made, redacted cells are black, and partially redacted cells have a red border.
Note that in our example, the totals and averages are dependencies, but the opposite is not true. The earnings reported each day are not dependent on the total/average cells to compute their values. Therefore, if we redact Total earnings, cell B9, there are no dependencies listed or available for complete or partial redaction.
If a cell is a dependency that references two redacted cells with different redaction dependency settings, then the dependency will be completely redacted.
For example, Monday's earnings and Tuesday's earnings share dependent cells. If we redact Monday's earnings, cell B2, and choose replace with formula and redact Tuesday's earnings, cell B3, and choose replace with value, then those dependencies have conflicting redaction settings and Everlaw will redact those dependent cells completely.
Pivot table dependencies
Pivot table dependencies are distinct from formula dependencies, since pivot tables do not contain formulas but calculate and group data. When cells used as source data for pivot tables are redacted, the entire pivot table becomes a dependent range. Everlaw has 3 options for dependent pivot tables: Redact completely, Replace with values, and Do not redact.
- If you select Replace with values , the values of the cells are retained, but the underlying pivot table is removed upon production. This is useful if you redact source data but only want to redact some part of the dependent pivot table. If any part of a pivot table is redacted, the underlying pivot table is removed, and the rest of the pivot table retains the cell values upon production.
- If you select Do not redact, the dependent pivot table is not redacted. Because source data is redacted and possibly stamped, this may affect the dynamically calculated pivot table and change the values upon production and viewing
Important
Redacting a pivot table without redacting the source data means that a viewer can choose to reconstruct the pivot table with the original data.
- When you redact a pivot table in the native spreadsheet, Everlaw indicates that you are redacting a pivot table and shows the source sheet and range to help you redact the source data if needed
- If you disable the ability to redact dependent cells for your spreadsheet, you do not see the option to redact dependent cells. Instead, the redaction dialog displays a warning message letting you know that your redactions will not affect dependent cells.
- If you redacting a very large spreadsheet and have enabled the redaction of dependent cells, the redaction operation may time out. This occurs to prevent the entire spreadsheet from crashing.
- Should a timeout be triggered, the ability to redact dependent cells will automatically be disabled for the spreadsheet during the viewing session.
Produce redacted spreadsheets
While native versions are usually withheld for redacted documents, the opposite is true for redacted spreadsheets. This is because native spreadsheets are redacted in native view, while other documents are redacted in the PDF or image. Therefore, if you choose to include natives when producing redacted spreadsheets, the subsequent production includes native spreadsheet files, with redactions burned in, and placeholder image files. If your native file format was originally .xlsb, the produced and redacted native documents is .xlsx.
Redact audio and video files
There are several ways to create redactions on audio or video files, including using redaction buttons or keyboard shortcuts from the redaction panel, or from the transcript. All ways to create audio and video redactions are covered in the following sections.
Create a redaction for an audio or video file
To turn on redaction mode on an audio or video file:
- Open the file in the review window.
- Select the Redact button, press the keyboard shortcut “r,” or select the header of the redaction panel. A redactions panel pops up below the audio or video file. This panel is identical for audio and video files.
The redactions panel is in three sections.
- The top row contains active buttons, such as Mark start, Mark end, play/pause, and preview settings.
- The middle row contains the redaction editing bar, with entries for Start time, End time, Redaction stamp, and Redaction note. The redaction that you are currently editing or creating will be displayed in this middle row.
- The bottom section of the table contains a list of all redactions already created for this video or audio file. In the example above, no redaction is currently being edited, but two redactions currently exist.
There are several ways to create audio and video redactions:
Redact while you watch
- Play the video up to the moment you want to start a redaction.
Note
If you want the redaction to start at the beginning of the file, skip step 2, and only mark an end time (step 3). The redaction will start at the beginning of the file. If you want the redaction to go to the end of the file, do not mark an end time (step 3) for the redaction.
- When you want to start a redaction, select Mark start in the top row of the redactions panel, or press the keyboard shortcut “,” (comma).
- At the moment that you want the redaction to end, press Mark end in the redactions panel, or press the keyboard shortcut “.” (period).
- To finish the redaction, select Redact or press "Enter/Return" on your keyboard. The redaction then appears in the table in the bottom section of the panel, and is added to the list of all existing redactions on this file.
- Click the play button on any row of this table to play the selected redacted section of the video or audio file.
Note that the video continues to play after you press Mark start and Mark end unless manually paused. The buttons next to Mark start and Mark end are for ease-of-use. The play/pause button plays or pauses the video; and the 1 and 5 buttons advance or rewind the video by 1 and 5 seconds, respectively.
- The selected start and end times appear in the redaction editing bar in the middle row of the redactions table, as shown below
- In this editing bar, you can use the up and down arrows next to the selected times to change the entered times by 0.1 second increments
- You can also adjust the times by typing into the start and end time boxes.
- Finally, you can add a redaction stamp and/or a redaction note
Redact from the transcript
You can also view and create redactions from the video or audio transcript.
Note
If the video or audio file was uploaded prior to the 26 February 2021 release, then the file first need to be reprocessed. Learn more about how to reprocess documents here
-
Ensure that the Transcript
button and the Redact
button are selected.
- The transcript is displayed next to the video or audio file. Redactions created in the redactions panel automatically appear on the transcript.
-
Click and drag to highlight the transcript text you want to redact. Redactions created in the transcript automatically appear in the redactions panel as well.
- You can redact multiple words or phrases within a document using Hit Highlights
- Note: you cannot use batch redaction in the results table to redact text from audio or video file transcripts, but you can batch redact metadata and delete all redactions from audio and video files from the results table.
Edit and delete audio and video redactions
To edit a redaction:
- Open the redactions panel
-
Select the pencil next to the redaction you want to edit.
-
Alternatively, you can click on the redaction in the transcript view while in redaction mode.
-
Alternatively, you can click on the redaction in the transcript view while in redaction mode.
- The redaction information is removed from the table and appears in the editing bar of the redactions panel.
- From here, enter changes to the redaction the same way you would when creating a new redaction.
- To save the changes, select Redact.
To delete a redaction, select the trash can next to the pencil button.
- You can delete all native redactions from the Annotations panel.
-
You can also batch delete redactions from the results table.
Preview an audio/video redaction
To preview redactions on the file, toggle on preview mode.
In video files, redacted content partially obfuscated in the preview (but fully redacted in the production). Also, the redaction may be slightly less precise in the preview than in the production.
The gear button underneath the preview mode toggle allows you to preview the effect of settings available for production in the production wizard. See the Audio/video redaction settings section of the Productions article for additional details about these settings.
Export redaction information
You can export redaction information of a document. You can include metadata fields of redaction information in a production load file and export redaction stamp information on a document through CSV exports.
Add metadata about redactions in production
On the load file step of the production protocol wizard:
- Search for the "Redacted" calculated field and include it in your load file.
- If a document in your production has redactions applied, the field is populated with a yes value; if not, the field is populated with a no value.
- [Optional] Search for the "Redaction Stamps" and "Redaction Stamp Details" calculated fields to include redaction stamp information in your load file. Learn more about productions here.
Export redaction stamp information to CSV
From results table:
Select Export to CSV and add the "Redaction Stamps" and "Redaction Stamp Details" fields to include in your CSV export.
- The “Redaction Stamps” filed includes all unique redaction stamps applied on the document and its metadata.
- The “Redaction Stamps Details” column includes the page locations of redaction stamps. Learn more about Export to CSV here.