Automated detection misses things, especially context
The detection engines are good at patterns: names that look like names, numbers shaped like phone numbers or account numbers, addresses, dates of birth. They are not good at meaning. A phrase like "the claimant's eldest daughter" identifies a real person but contains no pattern to match. Anything where the sensitivity comes from context rather than format will need a human pass.
What to do about it: Read the document yourself before exporting. Use the search-and-redact tool to sweep for names and terms you know are sensitive but might not be flagged as patterns.
OCR quality bounds everything else
For scanned PDFs and images, detection only sees what OCR extracts, and OCR is currently English-focused. If the scan is faint, skewed, low-resolution, non-English, or handwritten, OCR reads it poorly — and anything OCR misses, the detector cannot flag. RedactVault shows a per-page OCR confidence indicator and flags low-confidence, no-text, and failed pages so a degraded scan does not quietly under-detect, but it cannot redact text it never read.
What to do about it: Work from the highest-quality scan you can obtain, and treat any page flagged low-confidence or failed — and any non-English scan — as manual review. When a scanned document is exported as flattened images, text-layer verification does not apply, so visually inspect each redacted area page by page (margins, footers, stamps, signatures) before release.
PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and image workflows are not interchangeable
Each file type has its own export behavior. PDFs have two export modes (flattened image and native) with different tradeoffs. Word documents (.docx) preserve a virtualized layout with text-to-position mapping that occasionally needs progressive refinement. Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx) redact by cell — formulas on redacted cells are replaced with their values, and charts, embedded images, and macros cannot be visually redacted, so exports flag them for manual review. PowerPoint presentations (.pptx) redact slide text by coordinate and export a native .pptx; speaker notes and slide masters are scanned too, while charts, SmartArt, and embedded media cannot be visually redacted, so their text caches are scrubbed and exports flag them for review. Images are pixel-based, so redactions are burned into the image directly. A workflow you tested on PDFs will not behave identically on the other formats.
What to do about it: Test each file type you actually use, not just the dominant one. The verification steps that catch a leak in one format may not be the right ones for another.
Native PDF export and flattened image PDF export make different bets
Native PDF export keeps the text layer for unredacted parts of the document, which means smaller files and searchable output. It removes underlying content under each redaction and runs verification before download — and if a page cannot be verified, it converts that page to an image rather than letting an uncertain export through. Flattened image export converts every page to a picture up front, which is the strongest assurance but produces larger, non-searchable files.
What to do about it: Default to flattened image when assurance matters more than file size. Use native when downstream searchability matters and the document is straightforward.
Device resources cap what is possible in the browser
Because processing happens in your browser, file size, page count, and detection model speed are bounded by the device you are using — its memory, its CPU, and how much your browser is willing to allocate to one tab. To avoid silent tab crashes, uploads are capped at 200 MB for PDF, 100 MB for Word (.docx), and 50 MB for Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), and images.
What to do about it: For unusually large documents, use a desktop browser rather than mobile, close other heavy tabs, and run the fast detector first to scope the work before enabling the accurate detector.
Offline support is partial, not absolute
Offline support works inside an already-active paid session for some workflows, after the page and assets have been loaded. It does not cover every detection engine, and you cannot start a fresh session without connectivity — sign-in, plan checks, and initial asset load all need the network.
What to do about it: If you need offline reliability, load the app and the document while connected, then do not refresh the tab until you have finished and exported.
Read this with the security architecture page
In-browser processing protects the file from ever leaving your device. This page covers the other side of the picture: where the automated work falls short and what your team still has to do by hand. Both pages are needed for an honest read on what the tool can and cannot do.
