Remove metadata from a Word document

What metadata a Word document reveals

Word writes these details into every DOCX automatically, and anyone you send it to can read them under File › Info, or in Properties on Windows and Get Info on a Mac:

• Author and last saved bySensitiveYour name, and the name of the last person who saved it.
• Company and managerSensitiveFilled in from your Office account or your organisation’s template.
• Dates and editing timeRevealingCreated, modified and last printed, plus total minutes spent editing.
• Template and revisionRevealingWhich template it came from and how many times it was saved.
• Comments and tracked changesSensitiveReview notes with reviewers’ names, and deleted text still in the file.
• Custom propertiesRevealingClient codes, project numbers and document IDs added by your systems.
• Photos inside the documentSensitiveEach image keeps its EXIF: GPS location, camera, serial number.

How to remove metadata in Word itself

Word has a built-in way on both systems. It’s worth doing on every document you send outside your team:

What the inspector checks in each app, what to do on a Mac and why it can be greyed out: see the Document Inspector guide.

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

What Word’s own tools leave behind

The Document Inspector and the Mac privacy option clean the document’s own properties. Three 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.

How to remove all metadata from a Word document

1. 1

   Open the document in MetaClean

   Choose Documents › Single document and pick your DOCX or DOC 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 and every other field, plus the details hidden in the photos inside.

3. 3

   Choose what to remove

   The Privacy preset selects names, company and photo location and camera details. Tick Word comments under Content changes to remove review notes too, or anything else you want gone.

4. 4

   Save the clean copy

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

Word’s inspector, online tools and MetaClean, compared

Edit the author name instead of removing it

Sending a document under your company’s name rather than yours? Switch to Edit metadata in MetaClean to change the author, last saved by, company, manager, title, subject and keywords, or clear a single field, and save a modified copy.

Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs work the same way

Workbooks and presentations carry the same author, company and date fields, and the photos in a slide deck keep their location just like the ones in a Word file. MetaClean cleans Excel and PowerPoint files, OpenDocument ODT, ODS and ODP, and PDFs the same way. Drop a whole folder into Batch folder to clean them all at once, or let Watch Folders check every new document you save. For photos on their own, see the photo metadata remover.