Remove hidden data and personal information by inspecting documents, presentations, or workbooks (2025)

What the Document Inspector finds and removes in Word documents

The Document Inspector displays several different Inspectors that help you to find and remove hidden data and personal information in Word documents before sharing.

Important:We highly recommend that you use the Document Inspector on a copy of your original document, because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes. For more details, see Use the Document Inspector.

To quickly find and remove data and information::

1. In Document Inspector, select or clear the options (as described below) to remove or save.

2. Select Inspect.

   See Also

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3. Review the inspection results, and select Remove All on any items to delete.
   For caveats and info on removing information, see Use the Document Inspector.

4. Select Reinspect or Close.

Note:There is some information that the Document Inspector cannot remove, explained in the tables below.

Note:If your organization customized the Document Inspector by adding Inspector modules, you might be able to check your documents for additional types of information.

Types of hidden data and personal information

Word documents can contain the following types of hidden data and personal information:

• Comments, revision marks from tracked changes, versions, and ink annotations If you've collaborated with other people to create your document, your document might contain items such as revision marks from tracked changes, comments, ink annotations, or versions. This information can enable other people to see the names of people who worked on your document, comments from reviewers, and changes that were made to your document, things that you might not want to share outside of your team.

• Document properties and personal information Document properties, or metadata, include details about your document such as author, subject, and title. Document properties also include information that is automatically maintained by Microsoft 365 programs, such as the name of the person who most recently saved a document and the date when a document was created. If you used specific features, your document might also contain additional kinds of personally identifiable information (PII), such as e-mail headers, send-for-review information, routing slips, and template names.

• Headers, footers, and watermarks Word documents can contain information in headers and footers. Additionally, you might have added a watermark to your Word document.

• Hidden text Word documents can contain text that is formatted as hidden text. If you do not know whether your document contains hidden text, you can use the Document Inspector to search for it.

• Document server properties If your document was saved to a location on a document management server, such as a Document Workspace site or a library based on Windows SharePoint Services, the document might contain additional document properties or information related to this server location.

• Custom XML data Documents can contain custom XML data that is not visible in the document itself. The Document Inspector can find and remove this XML data.

Find and remove hidden data and personal information with the Document Inspector

Important:We highly recommend that you use the Document Inspector on a copy of your original document, because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes.

1. Open the Word document that you want to inspect for hidden data and personal information.

2. On the File tab, select Save As, and then type a name in the File name box to save a copy of your original document.

3. In the copy of your original document, on the File tab, select Info.

4. Select Check for Issues, and then choose Inspect Document.

5. In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxes to choose the types of hidden content that you want to be inspected.

6. Select Inspect.

7. Review the results of the inspection in the Document Inspector dialog box.

8. Select Remove All next to the inspection results for the types of hidden content that you want to remove from your document.

   Important:

   • If you remove hidden content from your document, you might not be able to restore it by selecting Undo.

   • If you want to remove hidden data and personal information from documents that you save in the OpenDocument Text (.odt) format, you must run the Document Inspector every time that you save the document in that format.