Remove the author from a Word document
A Word document remembers who created it, who last saved it, which organisation’s copy of Office was used, and often every change anyone made along the way. None of that shows on the page.
That is how documents leak. A tender sent to a client with the previous client’s name in the tracked changes; a CV with a recruiter’s internal comments still attached; a press release whose deleted paragraph is still in the file.
Works today, in your browser. Photos open in the editor and Word documents are checked for hidden data; either way the file is read on your device and never uploaded.
What a .docx actually stores about you
A .docx is a zip archive of XML parts. The identifying material sits in a handful of them, and Word does not go out of its way to mention it.
- Author and last-modified-by, in the core properties
- Company and manager, in the application properties
- Total editing time and revision number
- Comments, each with its author’s name
- Tracked changes — insertions and deletions with who made them and when
- Hidden text, which is formatting rather than removal: it is still in the file
- Embedded objects and images, which carry their own metadata
Why "Inspect Document" in Word is not always enough
Word’s own Document Inspector does a reasonable job and is worth using. Two things limit it: it is only on the desktop app, so it is unavailable on the web and mobile versions most people now use, and it reports categories rather than showing you what is actually in there.
Knowing a document contains comments is different from seeing that one of them names a competitor.
What cleaning does here
Removal is real removal — the XML parts are rewritten, not hidden.
- Author, last editor, company and manager fields are cleared
- Comments are deleted, along with their anchors
- Tracked changes are accepted, so deleted text is genuinely gone rather than marked
- Hidden text is removed
- Revision and editing-time counters are reset
What is deliberately left alone
Anything visible on the page is yours to decide about. A name typed into the body of the letter is content, not metadata, and silently deleting content would be worse than leaving it. Those findings are reported and marked as not removable, so the "cleaned copy" button never promises something it does not do.
How to do it
- 1Open the checkerNo account and no upload.
- 2Add the .docxIt is unzipped and read in your browser.
- 3Read the findingsAuthor fields, comments, tracked changes and hidden text are listed separately, with names shown masked.
- 4Download the cleaned copyYou get a .docx that opens normally in Word, with the identifying parts rewritten. The list of what was removed is shown in plain language.
Questions
Yes. The archive is rewritten part by part and the result is a valid .docx. The test suite re-opens and re-parses every cleaned fixture rather than assuming.
It makes the document say what it already displayed. Insertions become ordinary text and deletions are removed for real, instead of being carried along invisibly. If you need the revision history, keep the original — this produces a copy.
No. You get a new file; the one on your disk is untouched.
Not supported. The modern .docx is a zip of XML parts, which can be edited precisely. The legacy binary .doc is a different format and is not handled — saving it as .docx in Word first is the practical route.
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We report no issues found, never “safe”. Absence of detections is not proof of absence, and detection is best-effort.