Document Inspector in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, including on a Mac

What the Document Inspector is

Every Word document, Excel workbook and PowerPoint deck stores more than what you see on the page: your name as the author, the last person who saved it, your company, review comments, tracked changes, hidden rows and slides, and speaker notes. The Document Inspector is the tool built into Office for Windows that lists all of that in one place and lets you remove each kind with one click.

It’s worth running on anything that leaves your team: a CV, a contract, a proposal, a price list, a pitch deck.

How to run the Document Inspector in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

The steps are the same in all three apps on Windows (Microsoft 365, Office 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016):

1. 1

   Save a copy first

   Use File › Save As and work on the copy. What the inspector removes can’t always be restored, even with Undo.

2. 2

   Open the inspector

   Go to File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document. If Office asks you to save first, click Yes.

3. 3

   Choose what to check and inspect

   Tick the kinds of content to look for, then click Inspect. All of them are ticked by default.

4. 4

   Remove what it found

   Click Remove All next to each result you want gone, such as Document Properties and Personal Information. Click Reinspect to check again, then Close and save.

Source: Microsoft, Remove hidden data and personal information by inspecting documents, presentations, or workbooks.

What the Document Inspector checks in each app

Each app looks for its own kinds of hidden content. Some items are only pointed out, and you have to remove them yourself:

Two cautions from Microsoft: in Excel, removing hidden rows, columns or sheets can change the results of formulas that use them, so unhide and check them first. In PowerPoint, pictures in the notes and off-slide objects with animations aren’t picked up.

Document Inspector on a Mac

Office for Mac has no Document Inspector: there’s no Check for Issues or Inspect Document command in Word, Excel or PowerPoint for Mac. Here’s the closest each app gets:

None of them shows you what the file contains before you remove it, and none touches the photos inside. MetaClean for Mac does the inspecting: open a DOCX, XLSX, PPTX or PDF and it lists every name, date and photo detail, then saves a clean copy.

What the Document Inspector leaves behind

On Windows the inspector does a good job on the document’s own properties and hidden content. Four things still go out with the file:

That’s the gap MetaClean fills: it removes the document’s metadata and the photo metadata inside it, from a copy, and checks the result, on a Mac or a PC.

How to clean a document with MetaClean

1. 1

   Open the document

   Choose Documents › Single document and pick a DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF or OpenDocument file. It’s read on your computer; nothing is uploaded.

2. 2

   See what it reveals

   A privacy warning lists the author, last saved by, company, dates and every other field, plus the location and camera details in the photos inside.

3. 3

   Choose what to remove

   The Privacy preset selects names, company and photo location and camera details. In Word and Excel files, tick comments under Content changes to remove them too.

4. 4

   Save the clean copy

   MetaClean checks that every selected field is gone and the content is unchanged, then saves the copy in a “Clean” folder beside the original.

Document Inspector, Office for Mac and MetaClean, compared

Use them together on Windows: the Document Inspector for tracked changes, hidden text, speaker notes and hidden sheets, then MetaClean for the photo metadata and a verified copy.

Inspect Document greyed out or not working

Guides for each file type

For the details of each app, comments and speaker notes included, see the guides for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. For photos on their own, use the photo metadata remover.