On this page
Overview
This is the complete walkthrough of Conseal's core flow: drop in a document, let the AI find the sensitive information, review what it found, and save a redacted copy. If you only ever read one guide, make it this one. Every other guide assumes you know this flow.
What you'll have at the end: a redacted copy of your document that is safe to share, plus a passphrase that can bring the original values back if you ever need them. All you need is Conseal installed and signed in. You can even do this offline; the Local-only badge on the home screen means exactly that.
Pick your mode
Under Redact a document you'll see two modes. Fast finds common personal info in seconds and is the default. Intelligent reads context to catch information that doesn't follow a pattern, and supports custom categories. For a first run, Fast is fine; you can always rescan in Intelligent.
Home screen — mode chooser
Drop in your document
Drag your file onto the drop zone or click Browse files. Conseal handles PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint files, and spreadsheets, including scanned PDFs where the pages are images rather than text.
Let the scan run
Conseal reads the document page by page and detects names, organizations, emails, dates, locations, phone numbers, IDs, and account numbers. Everything happens on your machine, which is why the scan works with your internet switched off.
Scanning the document, page by page
Review what it found
The PII Detected panel lists every item with its category, a confidence percentage, and how many times it appears, with page numbers. Everything is also highlighted in the document, color-coded, so you can check items in context. Filter with the category chips, search for anything specific, and use the checkboxes to control what gets redacted. Repeated items are grouped, so one checkbox covers every occurrence of the same name.
The PII Detected panel
Something grouped wrong or missing? See How to review what Conseal detected. For a first run, the defaults get you far.
Redact
Click the Redact button at the bottom of the panel. Conseal creates a new file with your selections blacked out. Your original file stays untouched, exactly where it was.
The redacted output
Save your copy
Here's the part worth slowing down for. The redacted file itself is readable by anyone you send it to. What differs is who can bring the hidden text back — that's the "Lock with passphrase" switch on the save screen.
- 1
Off — open copy
Anyone with the file can restore the hidden text. Only for files staying in your own workflow.
- 2
On — locked copy
Conseal generates a six-word passphrase, like tennis-sugar-portal-able-turf-angel. Only it can restore the hidden text. Write it down; we never see it and cannot recover it. Turn this on when the file leaves your hands.
Save screen — locked copy
Not sure? Lock it. And before sending, click Verify redaction: Conseal re-checks the output and confirms with a green Verified clean message. To bring values back later, see How to restore a redacted document.
One habit worth building from day one
Conseal's detection is strong, but no automated detection is perfect, ours included. Before any redacted document leaves your hands, scroll through it once and check the pages yourself. The review takes a minute. It's the difference between a tool you trust and a tool you trusted blindly.