Strip hidden data from Word documents
Word documents accumulate a surprising amount of non-visible data over their drafting lifecycle. The most common: the author field captures whoever created the document in Windows user settings; the company field pulls from Office's organization profile and is often the firm name; the last-modified-by field records the most recent editor. None of these appear in the document body, but all are readable by anyone with a file hex editor, Word itself, or a metadata viewer.
Comments are more obvious — they're visible in Word's review pane — but easy to miss when you export to PDF through a desktop printer or virtual PDF driver. Whether comments survive depends on the PDF export path. PrepFile removes the comments.xml part from the DOCX, so any downstream PDF export from that file won't carry hidden comment data.
The hidden data report PrepFile produces lists every field it found and its value before stripping. Keep the report alongside your original: it documents what was there before the clean, which can matter if the cleaning itself is ever questioned.
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Finding hidden data in a Word document
- In Word: File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document. This is Microsoft's own inspector and is a good cross-check against what PrepFile reports.
- PrepFile's scrubber runs the equivalent check locally and strips the findings in one pass.
- Compare the two reports — if they agree, you can be confident the standard fields have been cleared.
Questions
Does Word's own Document Inspector do the same thing?
Word's inspector covers more (custom XML parts, embedded objects, macros), but it requires Word and doesn't work on documents you've received without opening them first. PrepFile works on any machine with a browser, without opening the document in Word.
What about custom document properties?
Core and app properties (the standard fields) are stripped. Custom properties defined by the author under File → Info → Properties are in a separate XML part and are not currently removed. If custom properties are a concern, use Word's Document Inspector after the PrepFile scrub.
Is the cleaned file identical to the original otherwise?
Yes — only the three XML parts (core.xml, app.xml, comments.xml if present) are modified. The rest of the zip archive is passed through unchanged.