Anonymise PDF¶

The Anonymise PDF tool lets you produce a redacted copy of a bank statement PDF suitable for sharing — for example, when attaching a failing statement to a GitHub issue. All text is scrambled by default. You use two simple tables to control which phrases are left unchanged (so the parser can still read them) and which strings are replaced with safe alternatives (before scrambling occurs).

Opening the tool¶

The Anonymise tool can be opened from two places:

• Admin dialog → Anonymise PDF section → Open Anonymise Tool button.
• Debug Info dialog → Anonymise button on any REVIEW or FAILURE row — the tool opens pre-loaded with that statement's PDF path.

Selecting a source PDF¶

Use the Browse… button to open a file picker and select the PDF you want to anonymise. The full path is shown in the field to the left of the button.

If the tool was opened from the Debug Info dialog, the path is pre-filled with the failing statement's path.

Configuring Anonymisation¶

The center panel contains two tabs for managing anonymisation rules. Configurations are saved automatically when you run the anonymisation or close the dialog (with retry logic if the first save attempt fails).

Always Anonymise Tab¶

Entries in this table force exact string replacements before the scrambling pass. Use this for structured data like sort codes or account numbers you want to replace with safe placeholders.

• Original Text column: the string to find (case-sensitive)
• Replacement column: the string to substitute
• Click Add Row to add a new replacement pair
• Click Remove Selected to delete a row

Example:

Never Anonymise Tab¶

Phrases listed here are excluded from scrambling. Use this for structural text the parser needs to read (e.g., column headers, balance labels, transaction type codes).

• Phrase column: text to leave unchanged (matching is case-insensitive)
• Click Add Row to add a new phrase
• Click Remove Selected to delete a row

Example:

Running the anonymisation¶

Click Run Anonymisation. The tool calls bsp.anonymise_pdf in a background thread so the UI remains responsive. The status line updates when the run completes, showing the full path of the output file.

The anonymised PDF is written alongside the source file with anonymised_ prepended to the filename (after any filename replacements are applied).

Viewing the results¶

Once a run completes, Open Original PDF and Open Anonymised PDF both become active. Click either button to open the file in your system's default PDF viewer. Open both to compare them side-by-side.

Config File Locations¶

The app stores two TOML files in:

<project folder>/config/user/

• always_anonymise.toml — forced replacements (original → replacement pairs)
• never_anonymise.toml — phrases excluded from scrambling

Both files are created automatically when the project is first initialised or connected. You can also edit them directly outside of openstan with any text editor (TOML format). Changes made outside the app are loaded the next time you open the Anonymise tool.