How to Remove Hidden Metadata from PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint Files
Documents leak author names, companies, software and editing history. Learn what PDF and Office metadata contains and how to remove it free on any device.
When you send a CV, a contract, a report or a press release, the file carries more than its visible content. Documents contain metadata that can reveal who wrote them, who edited them, which company owns the software licence and how long it took.
What metadata is hidden in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files?
- Author and "last modified by" names
- Company and manager
- Creation and modification dates, total editing time and revision number
- Template file path (which can include your Windows user name)
- Custom properties added by your organisation's systems
- Comment and tracked-change author names
What metadata is in a PDF?
PDFs store an information dictionary (Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, CreationDate, ModDate) and often an XMP stream with the same data plus extra history. The "Creator" and "Producer" fields reveal the software and sometimes the operating system used.
Remove it in three clicks
- Open the metadata remover (it handles PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and photos together).
- Drop your files in.
- Download the clean copies.
Nothing is uploaded: the files are processed in your browser, which matters for confidential documents.
Things metadata removal does not cover
Tracked changes, comments, hidden rows and columns, speaker notes and white-on-white text are document content. Accept or reject changes and delete comments in Word or Excel before cleaning. For PDFs, check for annotations and hidden layers.
Set a proper title instead
For public PDFs a good title helps search engines. Use the PDF metadata editor to replace your name with a descriptive title.