Why does the word CONFIDENTIAL show up in the text when I copy from my watermarked PDF?
Because a text watermark is written into the PDF as real text, not as a picture. Any program that reads the page's text reads the mark too: when you select and copy, when you search for a word, and when text is extracted. If the mark is Arabic, its letters may also paste in a different order. If that bothers you, use an image watermark instead, which adds no text to the file at all.
Why text and not a picture
Text in a PDF is light, stays sharp when zoomed and prints crisply at any size, and it is drawn in the embedded font so it looks identical on every device. That is why PDF watermark draws a text mark as actual text. The flip side of that is that PDF readers treat it like any other text on the page.
Where you will notice it
- Copy and paste: select a paragraph, copy it, and find CONFIDENTIAL in the middle or at the end, depending on where the mark sits in the page's drawing order.
- Search: search the file for 'confidential' and every stamped page matches. Sometimes handy, annoying when the word also appears in the real content.
- Text extraction: run the file through a tool such as PDF text extractor, or a system that reads documents automatically, and the mark appears in the extracted text, many times over if it is tiled.
- Screen readers: someone using a screen reader may hear the word read out on every page.
Arabic letter order when pasting
What you see on the page is always right, because the letters are shaped and ordered for display. Copying out of a PDF, though, depends on the program you read it in, and many return Arabic text with letters in a different order or in separate forms. That happens with Arabic in most PDFs and is not specific to the watermark.
The fix: an image mark
An image contains no readable text, so it never shows up in copying, search or extraction. Here is how:
- Set the word CONFIDENTIAL in any design app and save it as a PNG with a transparent background.
- In the watermark tool, choose Image instead of Text and upload it.
- Set its width as a percentage of the page width, then the opacity, angle and placement as you would for text.
- Press Add watermark and try copying from the result: only the original content comes out.
Bear in mind an image loses some sharpness under heavy zoom, so use one with enough resolution. And if you actually want a search to find 'confidential' in the document, the text mark is the better choice.
Common questions
Does being text make the mark easier to remove?
A mark of either kind can be removed with PDF editing software; being text does not change that much. It is a visual label, not protection.
Can I make the text mark unselectable?
No, the tool does not offer that. If it matters to you, use an image mark.