The 7 PDF mistakes that cost businesses time
From 'redact with a black box' to 'compress signed PDFs' — the recurring patterns that waste hours.
After thousands of hours of customer support tickets, a pattern emerges. The same handful of mistakes show up across legal, finance, HR, sales, and operations. Here are the seven that cost the most time.
1. Drawing a black rectangle and calling it redaction
The text underneath is still there. Real redaction permanently removes the bytes. Use the dedicated Redact tool. Test by copy-paste before sending.
2. Compressing signed PDFs
Compression rewrites the file's byte layout, voiding any cryptographic signature. Compress before signing, never after.
3. OCR'ing at low DPI
Below 200 DPI, accuracy drops fast. Rescan at 300 DPI grayscale — the gain is large.
4. Skipping OCR before downstream operations
Compare, Translate, Summarize, Chat — none work on image-only PDFs. Run OCR first.
5. Forgetting metadata
Author names and edit history live inside every PDF. Strip metadata when redacting or before sharing externally.
6. Wrong compression level
Strong compression on print-bound documents looks bad on paper. Match the level to the destination.
7. Manual workflows you do every week
If you OCR a folder every Monday, save the steps as a Macro. Repeating manual workflows wastes hours per month.
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