Control Redaction with Search Exclusion Feature in Redactable : Redactable Help Center

Search Exclusion Feature

The Search Exclusion feature makes automated redaction process smarter and more precise. It lets users exclude specific terms or pieces of information from being redacted. This ensures critical details remain untouched without manual effort.

For example, if you’re redacting a document with thousands of email addresses and you want to redact 1000 emails automatically but need to exclude two specific ones, such as [email protected] and [email protected]. Instead of manually reviewing and excluding those emails, you can create an exclusion list for them. When you run the redaction automation, these two emails will remain unredacted while the rest are securely redacted.

Why It Matters

The Search Exclusion feature keeps you in control of what remains visible and what’s hidden in your documents.

Key benefits of the search exclusion feature include:

Increased Accuracy: Specify which terms should stay unredacted, preventing over-redaction.
Time Efficiency: Streamline the redaction process by reducing the need for manual corrections.
Customizable Lists: Create and manage personalized exclusion lists tailored to various projects.
Consistency: Use the same exclusion lists across multiple documents for uniform results.

Using the Search Exclusion feature

We’ll demonstrate how you can use Redactable’s Search Exclusion feature to automatically redact your data while keeping specific terms excluded from redaction.

For this demonstration, we’ll use automated redactions to remove sensitive data from a healthcare document while keeping important information, such as the contact information, unredacted.

Preparing for redactions with a search exclusion list

1. From your Redactable dashboard, select the document you want to redact.

Creating exclusion list

2. Navigate to the toolbar and click on the "Search Exclusion" button in the top right corner.

3. In the Search Exclusion field, enter the terms you want to remain visible, and click ‘’Save List’’ button.

4. Name your list and click “Save Exclusion List.” This list will now be available for future redactions.

5. Select your custom exclusion list and click the “Apply List” button to activate the list for your redactions.

Performing automated redactions

Once your exclusion list is prepared and applied, proceed with your automated redaction process as you normally would.

6. Perform redactions by category or use the “Auto” feature.

7. As shown in the search results, the data in the exclusion list has been excluded from the automated redaction process.

8. Click “Select All” to choose all items in the search results.

9. Click the “Redact Items” button to redact the selected data.

10. Once the redaction is complete, open the Redaction Preview mode. You’ll be able to quickly verify that all excluded terms are unredacted in the document and were excluded from the automated redaction process.

As shown above, the search exclusion feature allowed us to redact all sensitive data using the automated redaction process while keeping important information excluded from redaction, which, in our case, was the patient’s contact information.

Editing or deleting an exclusion list

11. To edit an exclusion list, click the pen icon next to it.

12. Add, edit, or delete terms in the list as needed.

13. Click on “Apply List” to save changes.

14. To delete an exclusion list, click on the delete icon next to it.

All updates carry over to future sessions so you can easily use the most updated version of your search exclusion list.

If you have additional questions or need help, please contact us at [email protected].