Search & Discover - Redaction

Updated August 13, 2026 05:42

This article covers how the Redaction functionality for Search & Discover works.

Overview

Redaction is a new capability within Search & Discover that lets reviewers permanently obscure sensitive or non-relevant information from search results before that data is exported and shared outside the organization. Users with the appropriate permission can define a list of keywords and phrases (Find & Redact) or highlight the content in the message body they want redacted and have every exact match across their search redacted at the point of export.

Redaction is non-destructive: redactions are applied only at export time. The underlying archived content is never modified, preserving the integrity and evidential value of the archive while producing a safe-to-share output. Every redaction action is captured in the audit log.

How it works

The redaction model

Define: Within a search in Search & Discover, a user with the Redact permission opens the Find & Redact modal and supplies a list of keywords and phrases, or highlights terms directly in the content view using Redaction mode.
Match: Terms are matched using exact match, case-insensitive, no stemming — "car" matches "car" but not "cars". Matching applies to the message body.
Export: Redactions are applied at the point of export. Every redacted occurrence is removed from the data.
Audit: Each redaction action is logged in the audit log with the user, content ID, date/time, and app.

HTML Handling

Email bodies are commonly multipart (plain text + HTML) or HTML-only; however, Redactions are applied to plain text content — HTML is not redacted. This will be available in a future release and will be announced via Service Update.

Redaction does not:

Modify, delete, or alter the archived data in any way — the archive remains the immutable source of truth.
Support fuzzy matching, wildcards, regex, or semantic matching — matching is exact only.

Using Redaction

Apply Find & Redact to a search

Run your search in Search & Discover as normal.
Open the Find & Redact modal (requires the Redact permission).

Enter the keywords and phrases to redact. Remember: matching is exact and case-insensitive — add plurals and variants explicitly if needed (e.g. add both "car" and "cars").