Office metadata
How to remove metadata from a Word document
A Word file says who wrote it, who saved it last, for which company and how long it was edited — and Excel and PowerPoint files say the same. None of it shows on the page. hexscope shows it and saves a copy without it, in your browser. The file is not uploaded anywhere.
Check a document Try a Word document
1 What an Office file keeps
- Properties: the author, who saved it last, the company and manager, the template, the number of revisions, the total editing time, when it was created and last saved, and the version of Office.
- Custom properties and sensitivity labels: fields a company's tools add, such as a label that names the organisation and who set it.
- Comments, with the name of whoever wrote each one, and tracked changes, with the text each deletion removed, still in the file.
- Photos placed in it, each with its own EXIF: where it was taken, with which camera.
- In a workbook, hidden sheets and rows; in a deck, speaker notes and hidden slides.
The sample spreadsheet has a hidden sheet called “Salaries”; the sample Word document a tracked deletion that still says “except the east, where we lost the Lviv contract”.
2 Remove it
Open the file in hexscope. It reads Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, both the current ones (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and the old ones (.doc, .xls, .ppt). Under What this document reveals, press Remove it — save a clean copy. In the copy:
- the properties, custom properties and labels are emptied;
- photos lose their EXIF;
- in a Word file (.docx), tracked changes are accepted — what was deleted goes, with its text — and comments are deleted with their authors, as Word's own Accept All Changes and Delete All Comments would.
To reject a change rather than accept it, do it in Word first. A workbook's hidden sheets and a deck's speaker notes are part of what they are: remove them in Excel or PowerPoint. Then Open the clean copy, and hexscope says what is gone.
3 In Office itself
- Windows: File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document, then Remove All for each kind you want gone.
- Mac: in Word's settings, Security, turn on Remove personal information from this file on save, then save the file again.
Both work on the copy open in Office, one file at a time. Check the result either way: open the saved file in hexscope and see what is left.
4 Many files at once
Drop a folder on the page, or choose several files: each is listed with what it gives away, and Save clean copies saves the clean ones as a ZIP. The command line does the same on your own computer, and can empty Excel's and PowerPoint's comments and speaker notes too.
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