Systems and methods for redacting certain content (e.g., content representing private, privileged, confidential, or otherwise sensitive information) from electronic documents. An example method comprises: identifying, by a computing device, two or more layers in an electronic document; processing each of the identified layers to produce a layer text representing one or more objects comprised by the layer; combining the produced layer texts to produce a combined text of the electronic document; and identifying, within the combined text of the electronic document, a target character string corresponding, in view of a specified search function, to a specified character string.