Remove author names from PDF and Word files on WordPress
A file you upload to your Media Library is served exactly as it was saved. If it was saved with an author name, a company or a revision count, anyone who downloads it can read them.
What a downloaded file can reveal
Word, Excel and PowerPoint files keep document properties inside the file: the author, who last saved it, the company, and how many times it was revised. PDFs keep an author, a creator program and a producer program, and often a copy of the same details in XMP. Photos can carry the camera, the date and the GPS position. None of this shows on the page, but it is a download away.
Check a file before you upload it
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint: File → Info shows the author and last-modified-by. File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document lists what can be removed.
- PDF: in Adobe Acrobat or most PDF readers, open File → Properties and look at Author, Creator and Producer.
- Photos: on Windows, right-click the file → Properties → Details. On a Mac, open it in Preview and choose Tools → Show Inspector.
Menu names differ between versions, and these checks only cover what the program chooses to show.
Cleaning by hand
Word and PowerPoint can remove document properties with Inspect Document, and Acrobat has a Sanitize Document tool. This works, but it relies on every person who uploads remembering to do it, every time. That is the weak point on sites where several people, or visitors, upload files.
Cleaning new uploads automatically
The free Hexloom Upload Metadata Scrubber plugin does this step at upload time. It removes the author, company and revision details listed above from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG, PNG and WebP files, then shows a report of what it removed and what it found but could not remove. It runs on your own server and makes no outside requests.
Files already in your library
The free plugin only handles new uploads. The Hexloom Pro add-on cleans the files already in your Media Library in one pass and keeps a CSV log. It costs $29 a year per site. See the add-on.