Redaction is to obscure or remove something from a document prior to publication or release. Traditionally, text is redacted from documents, but in the PDF world, we can redact sections of pages to remove text or images. In the dark ages (1970s), one redacted by covering portions of a document with black ink. Nothing was actually removed from a document, but rather covered up. Close physical inspection of the documents could often uncover traces of the original redacted portions.
In Acrobat 9, the redaction tools don’t cover anything. They remove the unwanted text, image or portion of a page. Once redacted, those objects are gone. And I mean REALLY gone for good. Acrobat 9 reminds us of this when applying the redaction. You are informed that once redacted and then saved, your redacted content is gone forever. This sounds like a perfect time to perform a Save As, allowing you to give your newly (and permanently altered) PDF file a new name, and also therefore preserving your original document’s integrity. This concept is also presented to you by Acrobat’s dialog box.
There’s a nice little trick tucked away in Acrobat 9’s preferences to allow Acrobat to automatically alter the name of any document once redaction is applied. Click Edit>Preferences 
(Acrobat>Preferences on Mac) and select the Document category on the left. On the right, notice the bottom set of options deal with Examine Document choices. The very last option, when enabled, will automatically adjust the name of any file on which redaction is applied. A custom prefix or suffix can be defined here. Once enabled, your redacted PDF files will automatically be renamed to both preserve a version of the original document and to easily be able to differentiate the original from the redacted one. It’s still necessary to save that file once redacted, but you will notice that the altered name is there when ready to save.
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