Importing a PDF attachment as a project document

Often the most sensitive content in an email isn't in the body — it's in a PDF attachment. A contract, a bank statement, a medical report. Those need redacting in their own right, not just blocked out inside the parent email.

RedactBox lets you bring a PDF attachment into your project as a first-class document so you can search, redact and export it like any other file you've uploaded.

How to import

Open any PDF attachment to preview it. In the preview header you'll see an Add to project split-button next to Download. Click the main button to open the menu, then choose one of:

• Add & keep — imports the PDF and immediately marks it as Kept, so it shows up in Redact mode straight away. Use this when you know you want to redact the document.

• Add untriaged — imports it without marking it Kept. The PDF lands in Triage mode for you to handle later, alongside other files awaiting review.

Once imported, the button changes to a green Added & kept (or Added (untriaged)) chip, so you can see at a glance that the PDF is already in your project. If you switch to another attachment and come back, the chip will still be there for the remainder of your session.

What happens to the document?

The PDF is copied into your project as a new document and a reference back to its source email is recorded. You'll find it in the sidebar under the same project, alongside any .mbox or PDF files you uploaded directly. It behaves exactly like any other document — same redaction tools, same exports, same triage workflow.

Tracing back to the source email

Every imported PDF carries a link back to the email it came from, so you can always answer the question "where did this document originate?" — useful for audit trails and chain-of-custody requirements.

What if I import the same PDF twice?

RedactBox detects duplicate content automatically. If the same PDF appears in two different emails (or you re-import the same attachment by mistake), the duplicate-detection system will flag it in the Manage Duplicates wizard so you can resolve it cleanly.

Why only PDFs?

For now, Import-as-document is PDF-only. Word docs and spreadsheets are still fully previewable and downloadable from the Attachments tab, but they can't yet be redacted as standalone documents in RedactBox. We may extend this to other formats in the future — let us know on the feedback portal if it would be useful.