Delete, extract, or redact: three ways to remove something from a PDF, and when each is right

"Get rid of this" is one instruction that maps to three genuinely different tools, depending on what "this" is — a whole page you don't want anymore, a page you want to keep but separately, or a specific sentence buried inside a page you're otherwise keeping.

Remove Pages — you don't want this page at all

Removing pages deletes them from the document entirely. What's left keeps its own original page numbers if any were printed on the pages themselves — deleting a page from the file doesn't retroactively renumber whatever's physically drawn on the remaining ones.

Extract Pages — you want this page, just on its own

Extraction pulls selected pages into a brand-new file without touching the original — useful for splitting one section out of a larger report to send separately, while keeping the source document intact. The distinction from Remove Pages is which file you end up caring about: extraction keeps both; removal keeps only what's left behind.

Redact — the page stays, but this specific text has to actually disappear

Redaction operates inside a page rather than on whole pages — blacking out a specific name, account number, or paragraph while leaving everything else on that page untouched. The part that matters: real redaction has to permanently flatten what's underneath the black box, not just draw a rectangle over it, since a black box drawn on top of selectable text can still be selected, copied, and read right through it in some viewers. This site's Redact tool rebuilds the page's content so the covered text is actually gone, not just visually hidden.