Batch Redaction

Batch redactions allow you to redact terms and phrases from multiple documents at once from a results table. Batch redactions save time when there are specific words, phrases, or patterns (such as email address or other personally identifiable information) that you want to redact from multiple documents.

Requirements

To perform redactions, you must have Create or Admin redaction permissions. To batch redact, you must also have batch action permissions.

Perform a batch redaction

To perform a batch redaction:

1. Open a results table of the documents you would like to redact.

2. Select which documents you would like to redact using the table's row's checkboxes.

   Important

   By default, all the documents in your results table are selected. Batch redactions are run on refreshed search results, even if you have not refreshed your search. This means that if all documents are selected, they will all be redacted, including those that fit your search criteria but are not displayed in the results table. To display all documents to be redacted, select in the results table toolbar.

3. Select Batch > Redact. 
   
   A redaction panel appears for you to enter the document text and/or metadata to redact.
4. Enter or select the terms or metadata fields you wish to redact:

   • [Optional] In the Redact document text field, enter or select the text or a text pattern that you want to redact. This list includes persistent highlight categories, persistent hits,, and common redaction patterns (e.g. PII). 

     Note

     You can run and redact simple keyword searches. For example, to redact any instance of the word “California” or the word “Oakland,” you can run a boolean search for “california OR oakland.”  You can also run and redact advanced content searches. For example, you could redact all strings in which the words “summary” and “report” appear within five words of each other. This would redact “summary” and “report,” as well as any (five or fewer) words that appear between them.

   • [Optional] In the Redact metadata field, enter or select the field name or you want to redact.
     

5. You can see a preview of the text to be redacted under Sample hits, the Total documents that will be affected by the batch redaction per term, and the number of Non-redactable documents.

   Keep in mind:

   • Sample hits are generated from the text of the selected documents in your results table and you can use them to QC your intended redactions.

     Note

     Only 30 terms generate live hits, although all terms with hits will be redacted.

   • Non-redactable documents can't be redacted because they do not have images with embedded text. You can view a report of which documents were and were not redacted after completing the batch redaction task from the card in the Batches & Exports column.
   • Counts of non-redactable hits cannot be generated for metadata
6. Once you have entered the terms or phrases you would like to redact, select Configure redactions.

7. In the Configure redaction settings dialog you can:

   • Add redaction sets (if enabled for your project)
   • Add redaction stamps
   • Add notes
   • Configure your redaction dependency settings for spreadsheets

   If you apply a note during the batch redaction, the same note will appear on all redacted documents. This note is at the document level, rather than a redaction note linked to the particular redaction. One note is added per redacted document, rather than one note per redaction.

8. When you are done, select Next.
   If you selected spreadsheets from the results table, this opens the Spreadsheet redactions step. Otherwise it will skip this step and go directly to the Document text redactions (if applicable) or Metadata redactions (if applicable).
9. If applicable, configure your spreadsheet redactions:
   1. In the Cell redaction type field, select between:
      • Full cell redaction: Fully redacts any cell(s) containing the text to be redacted

      • Partial cell redaction: Only redacts the text to be redacted; other cell text remains visible

        Note

        Partial cell redactions in spreadsheets redact whole matches of your search term or pattern within a cell. They cannot redact only part of a single contiguous string (for example, turning 123456 into xxx456 when 123 is the only match).

   2. In the Spreadsheet formula dependencies field, select what you want to do to any cells containing formulas that are dependent on a redacted cell. Your options are:
      • Redact completely: Fully redacts the dependent cells
      • Replace with formula: Replaces the dependent cells with their formulas
      • Replace with value: Keeps the dependent cells' original values displayed (without the formula)
      • Do not redact: No redaction is applied to the dependent cell(s)
   3. In the Spreadsheet pivot table dependencies field, select what you want to do to any cells that act as sources for a redacted pivot table cell. Your options are:
      • Redact completely:  Every cell in the pivot table's dependent range is fully redacted
      • 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.
      • 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
10. When you are done, select Next.
    This opens the  Document text redactions step (if applicable) or the Metadata redactions (if applicable) step.

11. [On the Document text redactions step] There are partial redaction options for the terms that match potential PII formats. You can choose a partial redaction format for each batch redaction term.
    

    Note

    PII partial redaction formats apply to text in image/PDF based documents. For native spreadsheets, you can use partial cell redaction at the cell level, but you cannot apply the built-in PII partial-redaction formats to only part of a single spreadsheet value.

    Note

    Metadata or advanced search terms (regex, wildcard, fuzzy, proximity) do not have partial redaction options.

12. [On the Document text redactions step] For any partial redactions, choose the PII redaction type.
    
13. Once you have configured your batch redaction, select Apply. This will start a batch action that can be monitored from the homepage under Batches & Exports.
    Here are more details about redacting spreadsheets:
    • By default, spreadsheets on Everlaw do not have images (PDFs) and redactions are applied to the native file. If you have created images of a spreadsheet, batch redactions  are still applied to the native file. They are not applied to the image. When you produce the document, the image will be withheld with a placeholder.
    • Spreadsheet batch redactions are limited to 200,000 redactions across all pages of the spreadsheet. This limit applies to both batch redactions from the results table and the Redact all instances button in the review window. If a batch redaction creates more than 200,000 redactions on one spreadsheet, that spreadsheet will not be redacted, and this failure will be indicated on the Batches & Exports card and associated CSV. Other documents in the batch redaction will still be redacted.
    • Spreadsheets that are too large to be searched in the review window are not redacted from a batch redaction. In the review window, spreadsheets that are too large to redact display the warning: This spreadsheet document is too large to search fully. Only the first 200,000 cells are searchable. Please download the spreadsheet file to search the rest of the document.

A batch redaction may also be partially successful, meaning that some documents were redacted and others were not. By downloading the report, you can see whether contents and/or metadata were redacted. 

Batch delete redactions

You can delete redactions in a batch. These can be redactions that were created as batch redactions or redactions created in the review window. You may batch delete a set of redactions or opt to delete all redactions.

Required permissions: Users with Admin redaction permissions can delete redactions created by anyone. Users with Create redaction permissions can only delete redactions that they created.

Batch delete redactions by text, metadata, or stamp

To batch delete a set of redactions by text, metadata, or stamp:

1. Open a results table containing the relevant documents. 
2. Use the table rows’ checkboxes to select your target documents from the table. All rows are selected by default.
3. Select Batch > Redact.
   
   This opens the redaction panel.
4. Select Delete.
   
   By default, Delete specific redactions is selected.
5. Choose the values for which you want to delete redactions. You may select one or more values from any of the following fields:

   • Delete document text redactions: This field allows you to search for redacted words or phrases.

     Tip

     You may want to consider the following:

     • You can search for persistent highlights and persistent highlight categories, and enter most regular expressions (regex). For batch redaction deletion searches, if your search term is in quotes, you cannot use wildcards in conjunction with the following three symbols: [@ . '] [“at” symbol, period, apostrophe]. In this case, wildcards will behave like normal asterisks.
     • Batch un-redacting by text match will only work for text redactions that are an exact match for the phrase searched. Metadata, media, spreadsheet, image, and full-page redactions are not included in the batch deletion.
   • Delete metadata field redaction: This field allows you to delete all redactions on a particular metadata field.

   • Delete redactions by stamp: This field allows you to delete redactions with a specific redaction stamp, regardless of whether the redaction is of an image, a full-page, or metadata.

     Note

     Some redactions may contain multiple stamps. To fully delete a redaction by stamp, all stamps applied to the redaction must be selected for deletion.

     If only a subset of stamps is chosen, the redaction is retained with the remaining stamps, while the selected stamps are removed.

     
     
     Your selections appear in a table with sample hits and the number of total document hits.

6. When ready, select Delete redactions.
   A confirmation dialog appears.
7. To confirm the batch deletion, select Delete.
   A card is automatically generated in the Batches & Exports column on the homepage. For more information about this card, visit the section below titled Revisit batch redaction deletions. 

Batch delete all redactions

To batch delete all redactions for a set of documents:

1. Open a results table containing the relevant documents. 
2. Use the table rows’ checkboxes to select your target documents from the table. All rows are selected by default.
3. Select Batch > Redact.
   
   This opens the redaction panel.
4. Select Delete.
   
5. Choose Delete all redactions.
   
6. Select the Delete all redactions button.
   
   A confirmation dialog appears.
7. To confirm the batch deletion, select Delete.
   A card is automatically generated in the Batches & Exports column on the homepage. For more information about this card, visit the section below titled Revisit batch redaction deletions. 

Revisit batch redaction deletions

When you batch delete redactions, a card is automatically generated in the Batches & Exports column on the homepage. From this card you can:

• View how many documents were un-redacted. Select the number to go to a search of all documents affected by this deletion.
  
• Download a CSV containing information about the deleted redactions.
• Select Undo to undo the batch deletion. Keep in mind: 
  • Undoing a batch deletion also generates a Batch Action card. If any documents have been deleted or reprocessed, Everlaw is not able to undo a completed redaction deletion on those documents.
  • If new metadata redactions or full-page redactions have been created where redactions were removed, Everlaw does not replace the new redactions with the deleted ones. 
  • You can download a report of successful and unsuccessful redaction replacement on the undo batch action card.