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Office Metadata Remover

Remove Author Names and Hidden Metadata From Word, Excel and PowerPoint Files

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How the Office Metadata Remover works

This office metadata remover shows the names, company and hidden properties stored inside a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, then gives you a clean copy. It runs in your browser, so the document is never uploaded, and the text, layout and formatting stay exactly as they were.

What the office metadata remover takes out

A .docx, .xlsx or .pptx file is a zip of XML parts. Alongside the content sit document properties that Office fills in for you: the author and the last person to save it, title, subject, keywords, company, manager, the template it was built from, total editing time and the created and modified dates. Custom properties added by document management systems can hold client names, matter numbers or internal paths.

The tool reads those parts, shows what was there, removes them and rebuilds the zip without touching anything else. With the default settings it also replaces the names attached to comments and tracked changes with "Author", because a document sent outside the company often reveals who reviewed it long after the comments were resolved.

It does not change what is visible on the pages. Check the document itself for names in headers, hidden sheets or slides, speaker notes and embedded objects, and accept or reject tracked changes before you share it. Older .doc, .xls and .ppt files use a different format and are not supported.

FAQ

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is opened with JavaScript in this page and the cleaned copy is built in memory, so nothing is sent to a server. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works.

Will Word or Excel say the file is damaged?

It should not. Only the property and comment author parts are rewritten and every other part is copied byte for byte. If a file does fail to open, the original is untouched, so nothing is lost.

Does this remove the comments themselves?

No. Comments and tracked changes stay, only the names on them are replaced. Delete comments and accept or reject every change in Office first if the content of the review should not be shared.

Why are the dates kept in some files?

If you choose to keep dates, the created and modified times stay so the file sorts correctly. Office may add fresh dates and your name again the next time the file is saved, so clean it as the final step.

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