Quick answer
Drop the file into the tool above and read the “Found in your file” table: it lists what the file carries before you remove anything. If you have Word, Excel or PowerPoint, Microsoft’s own way is the Document Inspector. Its help page says: “On the File tab, select Info, choose Check for Issues and select Inspect Document.” That page’s product list covers Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 and the 2021, 2019 and 2016 versions (2024 only for Excel and PowerPoint). It does not list PDF, Mac or the web versions.
What Microsoft’s Document Inspector checks
Per Microsoft’s page, in Word it looks for comments, revision marks, document versions and ink annotations; document properties such as author, subject and title; headers, footers and watermarks; text formatted as hidden; custom XML data; and objects formatted as invisible. In Excel it looks for comments, document properties, hidden rows, hidden columns that contain data, hidden worksheets and printer path information. In PowerPoint it looks for comments, document properties, data about who edited the file and when, notes, and content placed outside the slide area.
The page also lists limits. For hidden text it says the inspector “cannot detect text that was hidden by other methods (for example, white text on a white background).” For Excel it lists items it cannot remove, among them external links to other workbooks, embedded files or objects and macros or VBA code; for PowerPoint, embedded files or objects and macros or VBA code. And it says to run the inspector on a copy: “it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes.”
How a browser tool can read the same things
Microsoft Learn says an Open XML file is “stored in a ZIP archive for packaging and compression”, that you can view its structure with a ZIP viewer, and that the parts are XML markup. Another Microsoft Learn page shows how to read an application property, such as Company or Manager, from a Word file “without loading the document into Word”. So inspecting needs no copy of Office, and Doc Scrubber does it in your browser without uploading the file.
Inspect and clean with Doc Scrubber
- Drop a .docx, .xlsx, .pptx or .pdf on the drop zone, or use Choose files. Up to 5 files at a time are free. Old .doc, .xls and .ppt files and password-protected files are not supported.
- Read “Found in your file”. It can show the author, last modified by, company, comments and who wrote them, tracked changes, custom properties, the preview thumbnail, photos with camera or GPS data and, for a PDF, the Info fields, XMP block and annotations. The table does not depend on the options you pick; they only change the copy.
- Check the items marked “kept”. Doc Scrubber reports but does not remove hidden sheets and very hidden sheets, hidden rows and columns, hidden slides, speaker notes, hidden text in Word, document variables, links to local file paths and, in PDFs, embedded file attachments. Decide on those yourself in Office or your PDF software.
- If you want the copy, pick your options above the drop zone and select Download clean copy. For Word files, “Tracked changes in Word files” offers “Leave them in the file” (the default), “Accept all changes” and “Reject all changes”.
- Read “Still in the clean copy”, which is re-read from the new file, then open the copy before sending it. Keep the original.
What this does not remove, or look for
- Anything visible: names in the body text, headers, footers, signature blocks and watermarks, plus text inside images and the file name.
- Macros, embedded objects, images inside PDFs and photos in formats other than JPG, PNG and WebP.
- Digital signatures: cleaning breaks them, and the report warns you.
- Copies stored elsewhere, such as earlier versions already emailed or synced.
- Some things Microsoft’s inspector checks: Doc Scrubber’s tables do not list headers, footers, watermarks, invisible objects or content outside the slide area. If you have Office, run the Document Inspector on a copy as well.
Who should inspect before sending
Lawyers sending a draft, consultants and freelancers sending proposals, RFP and procurement teams, HR and recruiters, and journalists. For one file type, see remove hidden data from a Word document, remove tracked changes and comments from Word, remove metadata from an Excel file, remove personal information from PowerPoint or remove metadata from a PDF. This is general information, not legal advice.