Excise vs PII Tools

Excise is a free, open-source PDF editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its central feature is permanent redaction: it removes text, images, and vector graphics from PDF content rather than placing a visible cover over them. By default, the cleanup also removes metadata, attachments, JavaScript, thumbnails, and hidden layers, and reports those removals. The app handles search, text selection and copying, annotations, page organization, Bates numbering, file-size reduction, and AcroForm filling, flattening, and creation. Its command-line tools support batch work and stable JSON output; `unredact` checks for leaked redacted text, while `audit` looks for text beneath opaque overlays. Excise reads and writes AES-128 and AES-256 encryption and inspects digital signatures against the operating system trust store. Signature inspection does not check revocation or evaluate timestamp and long-term validation material. Dynamic XFA layouts are experimental and cannot be filled. Downloads include packages for Apple Silicon macOS, Windows 10/11 x64, Ubuntu/Debian, and x64 or ARM64 Linux; builds are unsigned, not notarized, and lack auto-update.

PII Tools locates and helps remediate personally identifiable information, payment-card data and health information across digital assets. It scans more than 400 file formats in local or cloud storage, covering structured and unstructured data. Analytics and reporting support review, while users can redact or erase information individually or in batches. Person Cards aggregate detected records associated with people across files, email and databases, with spreadsheet export. Document redaction supports in-place changes and pseudonymization for PDFs, Excel files and images, and a REST API can automate workflows. Named connectors include Microsoft 365 Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB. It can run on a customer server, keeping sensitive data within the network according to the maker. Deployment uses Docker-capable machines or virtual machines. A seven-day hosted trial is available by contacting PII Tools.