TechNote

Acrobat 9 Search and Redact Patterns for non-U.S. users

Summary

This article describes additional files which enhance the Acrobat 9 Search and Redact Pattern feature for users in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. These additional files are available at the end of this article.

Background

Acrobat 9 Pro (Win and Mac) and Pro Extended (Win) extends Acrobat's Search and Redact functionality to support pattern-based searching. The five patterns included with Acrobat 9 are:

Phone Number
Credit Card Number
Social Security Number
Email Address
Date

With pattern-based searching, the user can choose one of these five patterns and search for all text strings in one (or more) PDF files which match this pattern. For example, if the user chooses the Social Security Number pattern, Acrobat will search across the PDF file and find all instances of this pattern. The user can then select some or all of these search results and mark them for redaction.

Certain patterns above do not work well for non-United States users. For example, Social Security Numbers are used in the United States as its de facto national identification number. However other countries have different national identity numbers (the Canadian Social Insurance Number or the British National Insurance Number). Therefore, Adobe has created and is making available additional pattern files for the five countries noted above.

Pattern Details

The five patterns above have been changed as follows:

Canada -- Replaced the United States Social Security Number with the Canadian Social Insurance Number. Modified the date pattern. All remaining patterns are identical to the U.S. patterns.
United Kingdom -- Replaced the United States Social Security Number with the U.K. National Insurance Numbers. Modified the phone number pattern. All remaining patterns are identical to the U.S. patterns
France -- Replaced the United States Social Security Number with the French National Identification Number. Modified the phone number pattern. Modified the date pattern. All remaining patterns are identical to the U.S. patterns
Germany -- Replaced the United States Social Security Number with the German National Identification Number. Modified the phone number pattern. Modified the date pattern. All remaining patterns are identical to the U.S. patterns
Japan -- Modified the phone number pattern. Modified the date pattern. All remaining patterns are identical to the U.S. patterns

Installation Instructions

Download the ZIP file SearchRedactPatterns.ZIP to your desktop. Double-click it to open and extract the files.
Close Acrobat.
Browse to the following folder.
- On Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\Preferences\Redaction\<locale>\
- On Windows Vista: \Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\Preferences\Redaction\<locale>\
- On Mac Intel: /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Acrobat/9.0_x86/Redaction/<locale>/
- On Mac PowerPC: /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Acrobat/9.0/Redaction/<locale>/
  <username> is your User Name or Account log in name for that computer.
  <locale> is the language you run the Acrobat application in (ENU for English, FRA for French, DEU for German, JPN for Japanese).
Rename the existing file SearchRedactPatterns.xml in case you need to revert to this file. For example, rename it SearchRedactPatterns.backup
Copy the appropriate SearchRedactPatterns.xml file from Step 1 into this folder. For example, if you use the Acrobat application in French and wish to start using the French pattern file, copy the French XML file from Step 1 into the French locale folder you browsed to in Step 3.
Restart Acrobat
Go to Advanced > Redaction > Search and Redact
In the "Select your pattern" dropdown, verify that the new patterns detailed above appear.

Potential issues and solutions

If at Step 3 on Windows, you can't see the folder "Application Data", try the following:
1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Choose Folder Options
3. Click on the View tab
4. Find Hidden Files and Folders in the list and double click to open it
5. Enable "Show hidden files and folders".
If at Step 3, you can't see the folder "Redaction", it may be because you've never used the Search and Redact feature before. In this case try the following:
1. Launch Acrobat
2. Go to Advanced > Redaction > Search and Redact. Click "OK" in the dialog. The Search and Redact window should appear on the left.
3. Return to Step 3. The Redaction folder should have been created automatically.
If you complete all 8 steps, yet the new patterns detailed above are not appearing, verify on Windows that in Step 3 you browsed to the folder ...\9.0\Preferences\Redaction... This XML file also appears in another folder, yet the changes will only apply if you replace the XML file in the appropriate Preferences folder.