How to white out a PDF online (text or images)

You've got a PDF to send and something in it is wrong: an old date, last year's price, a name that shouldn't be there, a photo you'd rather leave out. And there's no original Word file to fix. That's what PDF white out is for: covering the bad bit so the page looks clean, and usually typing the right thing on top.

In Edit PDF you can do it two ways. Paint over anything in white, text or picture. Or, when the words are real text, open them up and delete them, so they're gone from the file instead of sitting under a coat of paint. Here's both, plus a quick check so nothing you meant to hide is still hiding in there.

How to white out a PDF online

The white out tool in our editor is the Draw pen, set to white.

1. Open Edit PDF and choose your PDF.
2. Zoom in on the part you want to cover. It's much easier to stay inside the lines up close.
3. Click Draw in the toolbar. A small menu opens with the pen's line thickness, a row of colors, and a custom color box beside them.
4. Open the line thickness menu and pick the thickest line (20 points).
5. Open the custom color box and set the color to white: type FFFFFF in the hex field, or click the white swatch.
6. Paint over the words or the picture, back and forth, until nothing shows through. Go a little past the edges so no stray pixel of a letter peeks out.
7. Click Download, then PDF.

Made a mess? The undo arrow takes back the last stroke.

When you've drawn on the page, the download menu also shows Lock annotations, ticked by default. Leave it ticked: it bakes your white paint into the page, so nobody can click your strokes and delete them in another PDF reader. (What it doesn't do is take away the text underneath. More on that below.)

Type the right thing on top

Most white outs are a fix, not a removal. The date was wrong, so you cover it and write the right one.

Click Add Text and a text box lands on the page. Drag it over the white patch and type the correction. Do this after you've painted, so the new text sits on top of the white and not under it. Zoom out once at the end to see the line the way your reader will.

Or delete the text instead of hiding it

Here's the part most white out guides skip. If the PDF has real text (you can select it with your cursor), you don't need to cover it at all. You can delete it.

1. Click Edit Text in the toolbar. Blue boxes appear around the blocks of text on the page.
2. Click into the block with the words you want gone.
3. Select them and delete them, or type the new words in their place, the way you would in a document.
4. Click Download, then PDF.

This is what people usually mean when they search for how to delete text from a PDF or erase text from a PDF: the words aren't under a box, they're gone. For a typo, a wrong figure or a name that shouldn't be there, it's the cleaner fix, and the new words come out as text you can still select and search.

The one limit: Edit Text works on PDFs with real, selectable text. A scanned page is a picture of words, so there's nothing for it to grab. Pages with complicated layouts can also come out a little uneven, so check the page before you download.

Removing an image from a PDF

To get rid of a photo, a logo or an old signature, use the same white pen: thickest line, white, and paint over it until it's gone. Big pictures take a minute of back and forth, so zoom in and work in rows.

If the page behind the image isn't white, match it instead. The custom color box takes any color, so set the pen to the background's color and your patch blends in.

White out isn't redaction: what's still in the file

White paint covers what you see. It doesn't take the words out of the file. Someone who gets your PDF can often still select the hidden text, copy it, or find it with a search, even with Lock annotations ticked. Locking keeps your paint from being peeled off; the text underneath is still there.

So before you send anything, do the two second test: open the downloaded PDF, press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for the word you covered. Or try to select it with your cursor. If it turns up, it's still in the file.

For anything you'd be upset to see leak (an account number, an ID number, a home address, medical details), don't just paint over it. Delete it with Edit Text so the words are really gone, then run the test again.

When the white out doesn't look right

• Gray or see-through patches. The pen isn't pure white, or its color is see-through. Open the custom color box, make sure the hex field reads FFFFFF, and drag the lower slider (transparency) all the way to the right.
• Bits of letters peeking out. You painted right up to the edges. Zoom in, paint a little past them, and zoom out to check at normal size.
• A scanned PDF. The page is a picture, so Edit Text has nothing to work with. The white pen is your tool, and anything on the page is covered, not removed.

For what needs a free account and how big a file can be, see Edit PDF in What Each Tool Does.