How to remove hidden information from a Word document before you send it
A .docx can carry its author’s name, comments, tracked changes, hidden text, the cropped-off parts of its pictures and a whole workbook behind a chart. Word’s Inspect Document clears most of it. A few things need doing by hand, and words that must not travel at all need taking out of a copy, not hiding.
15 October 2026 · 6 min read
What can travel with a document
- Comments, with the name of everybody who wrote one.
- Tracked changes. Deleted text stays in the file until the change is accepted or rejected. Switching the view to No Markup only hides it.
- Properties: the author, who saved it last, the company, the path of the template on somebody’s computer, the revision number and the total editing time.
- Hidden text (formatted as Hidden), text coloured white, and text behind a picture.
- Cropped pictures. Word keeps the whole picture and only shows the cropped part, so the piece cut off is still in the file.
- Charts. A chart made in Word carries its own workbook, often with more figures than the chart shows.
- Headers, footers, watermarks, ink and custom XML, which a reader rarely looks at.
Run Inspect Document
In Word for Windows: File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document. Tick the kinds of content to look for, press Inspect, then Remove All beside each kind you want gone. Some of what it removes cannot be put back, so run it on the copy you are about to send, not on your working file.
It covers comments, revisions, document properties and personal information, hidden text, invisible content, headers, footers and watermarks, custom XML and embedded documents. Word for Mac has no Inspect Document. Its privacy settings can remove personal information from a file when it is saved, and the rest is done by hand.
What to do by hand
- Decide on the changes and comments yourself. Review, Accept All Changes (or Reject All), then Delete All Comments in Document, so you know what the copy says rather than leaving a removal tool to decide.
- Delete the cropped areas. Select a picture, then Picture Format, Compress Pictures, and tick Delete cropped areas of pictures.
- Paste a chart as a picture when its figures must not travel.
- Read the headers, footers and footnotes once more, and File, Info, Properties, Advanced Properties.
Words that must not travel need taking out, not hiding
Word has no redaction tool. Black highlighting, a black shape or white text over a name keeps the name in the file, and in any PDF saved from it.
To take words out of a copy in Word itself, turn Track Changes off first, because a tracked deletion keeps the words in the file. Then replace each one, using Find and Replace for names that recur, with a block of █ characters or [removed]. Check the comments, headers, footers, footnotes, text boxes and properties afterwards, where a name is easy to miss.
If you send a PDF instead
Saving as PDF leaves most of the hidden content behind, though not all of it. In Word’s Save As PDF Options, publish the Document rather than Document showing markup, and untick Document properties if the author and title should not go. Keep Document structure tags ticked: they are what makes the PDF readable with a screen reader.
Words under black boxes come through into the PDF as text, so take them out before converting, or redact the PDF properly afterwards.
Our own product, disclosed
Where our own software comes into this
We make Rutba Office, a free desktop suite for Windows whose Documents app opens and saves Word files. Since version 1.50 it has Inspect Document where Word has it (File, Info, Check for Issues). It finds comments, revisions, personal information, properties, custom XML, headers, footers and watermarks, hidden text, invisible content, ink and embedded documents, each with Remove All.
It also has what Word lacks. Review, Redact marks the selection, every match of a search, email addresses, telephone numbers, card numbers or a pattern of your own, and Apply saves a copy with the marked words taken out of the body, headers, footers, notes, comments, tracked changes, field codes, alt text, link addresses, properties and an embedded workbook, with black bars in their place. It reads the saved copy back from the disk to prove no marked word is left. Since version 2.0, Presentations and Worksheets have Redact and Inspect too. It is a beta, so check the copy as you would with any tool.
Related
How to redact a PDF so the words are really gone
A black box drawn over words hides them on screen and leaves them in the file, where anybody can copy them out. Real redaction takes the words out of the page and out of everywhere else the PDF keeps them, and then you check the result by searching it.
How to review a document with other people: tracked changes, comments and Restrict Editing
Three tools do the work. Tracked changes record who changed what, comments carry the discussion, and Restrict Editing stops reviewers changing more than they should. Each protects against one thing and not the others, and none of them keeps a document secret.
What is actually inside a .docx file
Rename it to .zip and look. Understanding the parts explains almost everything about why documents behave the way they do between programs, and lets you fix a corrupt file by hand.
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