How to rewrite sensitive information in Word documents

Today, Mytour will guide you on how to permanently remove sensitive information in Microsoft Word. The only way to ensure that the text has been successfully rewritten is by deleting it. However, if you need to prove this, you can replace the text with placeholder characters and black bars. If you don't want to replace the entire rewritten text, you can convert the Word document into a series of images. Lastly, both Windows and Mac users can use the 'Inspect Document' tool to remove metadata (like the author's name) from the document.

Open the Word document. Double-click on the Word file containing sensitive information you want to rewrite to open it in Word.

• Note: This method is only feasible for smaller documents. To remove a large amount of text, you will need to save the Word document as an image file.

Select the text you want to rewrite. Click and drag your mouse over the text to highlight it.

Click on the word count. The word count will appear in the bottom left corner of the window as [number] of [number] words. A dialog box will pop up with information about the characters and words in the document.

• For example, if you select 23 words in a 350-word document, click on 23 of 350 words in the bottom left corner.

Review the character count. Look at the number next to the 'Characters (with spaces)' label in the pop-up window.

• You'll need to remember this number when replacing the text you wish to delete with other content.

Click on Close (Close) at the bottom of the window. The dialog box will close.

Copy the selected text. Press Ctrl+C (Windows) or ⌘ Command+C (Mac).

Open the "Find and Replace" menu. Press the shortcut keys Ctrl+H (Windows) or Control+H (Mac) to proceed.

Paste the text to be rewritten into the "Find what" field. Click on the "Find what" text box at the top of the pop-up window, then press the shortcut keys Ctrl+V (Windows) or ⌘ Command+V (Mac).

Enter replacement text into the "Replace with" field. Click on the "Replace with" text box near the bottom of the pop-up window, then type a number or random letter (e.g., x) to replace each character you deleted.

• For example, if you highlighted 20 characters (including spaces), you need to enter x 20 times.
• This process can be quite tedious if you need to replace many long lines of information. If accuracy is your top priority, consider the method of converting the Word file to an image.

Click on Replace all at the bottom of the window. This option is at the bottom of the window.

Click on the OK button at the bottom of the pop-up window. The selected text will disappear and be replaced with a string of meaningless characters.

Repeat the process for other text that requires editing. Once all confidential information has been replaced with random characters, you may proceed.

Highlight the replacement text. You need to select all the rewritten text in your document:

• Click the downward arrow next to the ab highlighter icon in the "Font" section.
• Select the black color from the drop-down menu.
• Choose a line of replacement text.
• Click the black line below the highlighter icon, and repeat the process for all other replacement texts.

Save the file. Use the shortcut Ctrl+S (Windows) or ⌘ Command+S (Mac) to save. The changes will be saved, but if you want to remove metadata, check this method.

Open the Word document. Double-click on the Word document containing sensitive information you wish to rewrite to open it in Word.

Select the text you want to edit. Click and drag your mouse over the text to highlight it.

Click the black square in the dropdown menu. The highlighting tool will be set to black, and it will be applied to the selected text.

Highlight additional text if necessary. Once the highlighting tool is set to black, you can select more text and click on the black bar under the highlighter icon to apply the black highlight to the content.

Save the document as a PDF. This can be done on both Windows and Mac computers:

• Windows — Click File, select Save As, double-click This PC, choose "Save as type" and select PDF from the dropdown menu, then click Save.
• Mac — Click File, select Save As..., click the "File Format" text box, select PDF from the dropdown, and click Save.

Use a service to convert PDF to JPG. Go to http://pdftoimage.com/ in your web browser. Although many websites and services convert PDF files into images, PDF-to-Image saves each page of your document as a separate JPG file, without displaying the text underneath the highlighted parts.

Click on UPLOAD FILES button. This button is located in the middle of the window. The File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) will open.

Select the PDF file. Click on the PDF file you saved from the Word document.

Click on the Open button located at the bottom-right corner of the window. The PDF file will begin uploading to the conversion service.

• On Mac, click Choose to select the file.

Click on the DOWNLOAD ALL button to download everything. Once the PDF file uploads to the converter, this button will appear at the bottom of the page. Click it to begin downloading a ZIP folder containing all document pages as images.

Extract the ZIP folder. The process will vary depending on your operating system:

• Windows — Double-click the ZIP folder, click Extract at the top of the window, select Extract all from the toolbar, and then click Extract at the bottom. The folder will open once the extraction is complete.
• Mac — Double-click the ZIP folder and wait for the extracted folder to appear.

Open the image folder. This is the folder named after the PDF file, and it will be the only one in the window. The list of numbered images representing each page will be displayed. You can open any image to view the page compiled from the Word document.

• For example, inside the folder named after the PDF file, you will find images named according to the page numbers of the Word document.

Open the Word document. Double-click on the Word document you want to protect to open it in Word.

Click on the File button at the top-left corner of the Word window. A menu will appear.

• On Mac, click Review at the top of the Word window.

Click on Inspect Document. This option is located in the middle, near the bottom of the page. Another menu will pop up.

• On Mac, you will need to click on Protect in the Word toolbar.

Click on Inspect Document in the drop-down menu.

• On Mac, click on Protect document here.

Check to ensure that the "Document Properties and Personal Information" box is ticked. This box is located near the top of the window.

• You can uncheck other boxes in this window if preferred.
• On Mac, check the box that says "Remove personal information from this file on save", then proceed to the final step in this method.

Save the document. Close the Word file and click on Save when prompted by the program asking if you want to save the changes to the document.

• Documents created in Microsoft Word or in PDF format, which contain overwritten or marked data, can still be used to recover the text. Therefore, if you wish to secure the text in the document, we recommend permanently deleting the text or converting the Microsoft Word document to an image format.

• Other methods (such as highlighting the drafted text and locking the file, or converting it to PDF format) do not permanently erase the text that needs to be protected from the document. These contents can still be accessed by other suitable programs.