How to remove text from a PDF?

Please take a look at the RemoveContentInRectangle example.

Let's say we have the following page:

Original PDF

Now we want to remove all the text in the rectangle defined by the coordinates: llx = 97, lly = 405, urx = 480, ury = 445] (where ll stands for lower-left and ur stands for upper-right).

We can now use the following code:

public void manipulatePdf(String dest) throws IOException {
    //Load the license file to use cleanup features
    LicenseKey.loadLicenseFile(System.getenv("ITEXT7_LICENSEKEY") + "/itextkey-multiple-products.xml");
    PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(SRC), new PdfWriter(dest));
    List cleanUpLocations = new ArrayList();
    cleanUpLocations.add(new PdfCleanUpLocation(1, new Rectangle(97, 405, 383, 40), Color.GRAY));
    PdfCleanUpTool cleaner = new PdfCleanUpTool(pdfDoc, cleanUpLocations);
    cleaner.cleanUp();
    pdfDoc.close();
}

As you see, we define a list of PdfCleanUpLocation objects. To this list, we add a PdfCleanUpLocation passing the page number, a Rectangle defining the area we want to clean up, and a color that will show the area where content has been removed.

We then pass this list of PdfCleanUpLocations to the PdfCleanUpTool along with the PdfDocument instance. We invoke the cleanUp() method and when we close the PdfDocument instance, we get the following result:

Text in gray area has been completely removed

You can inspect this file: you will no longer be able to select any text in the gray area. All the text inside that rectangle has been removed.

Click How to remove text from a PDF? if you want to see how to answer this question in iText 5.