Applies to: Pro and Enterprise; Standard can view profile settings but cannot create a custom policy
Open Sanitization Options
Use Sanitization > Sanitization Options to review or change the active policy. Pro and Enterprise editions allow mode chenges and individual removal controls. Standard allows inspecting the active Metadata Only or External Sharing configuration but the advanced controls are disabled.
Document and structure options
Available controls include:
- Document metadata — removes the document information dictionary and selected related metadata keys;
- XMP metadata — removes XMP metadata streams;
- Document identifiers — removes PDF trailer identifiers;
- Previous / incremental revisions — always enabled and cannot be turned off;
- Comments and annotations — removes ordinary annotations, subject to separate link and form choices;
- Form values — removes the interactive form structure and widget annotations;
- Embedded files — removes embedded-file and associated-file structures;
- JavaScript and document actions — removes JavaScript and supported active action types;
- Remove hidden / optional content layers — removes optional-content structures when the selected mode can safely satisfy the request;
- Hyperlinks — removes link annotations and supported external navigation actions;
- Bookmarks — removes document outlines.
Content sanitization
Remove hidden / off-page text targets text detected with invisible rendering modes or positioned completely outside the visible page. In Preserve Quality mode, affected pages are reconstructed from rendered content.
Verification options
- Verify sanitized document after processing runs verification automatically after a successful sanitization.
- Calculate SHA-256 hashes calculates input and output fingerprints during sanitization.
If a later manual verification is run, PDFSanitize obtains the fingerprints required by the verification record even when they were not stored during the earlier sanitization step.
Reset defaults
Use Reset Defaults to return the interface to the product’s default profile configuration. PDFSanitize also stores the user’s current sanitization settings between sessions, subject to edition restrictions.
Standard never restores a custom Pro or Enterprise policy. If the application starts in Standard, only Metadata Only or External Sharing can be restored, together with the user’s verification and hash preferences.
Policy review
A custom configuration can be weaker than a predefined profile. Before processing sensitive documents, review every unchecked option and confirm that retaining that content is intentional.