Does saving a Word file as PDF remove comments?

Not automatically. Word's PDF option "Document showing markup" prints comments and tracked changes, including deleted text, onto the pages; plain "Document" leaves them out. A separate "Document properties" option decides whether the author and title go into the PDF.

That is what Microsoft documents, and it is also what we saw when we tried it. This guide shows the four combinations we exported, what each PDF contained, and what was still in all of them.

What Microsoft says the settings do

On Microsoft's page about saving to PDF, the Options dialog has a "Publish what" choice. Selecting "Document showing markup" includes tracked changes in the PDF; otherwise the page tells you to make sure "Document" is selected. The same dialog has a "Document properties" box that decides whether the properties of the file go into the PDF.

Microsoft's reference for Word's export function describes the matching settings: one for exporting text only or text with markup, and one for including document properties. Its list of export items has two values, one that exports the document without markup and one that exports it with markup.

What we tested

We ran this on Microsoft Word 2016 on Windows. We made one test document with invented content: a comment, one tracked insertion, one tracked deletion, and an invented author, title and company. We then exported it four times with Word's own export function, once for each combination of the two settings. We used the function's settings rather than clicking through the dialog, so the dialog itself was not part of the test.

We read each PDF back with a PDF reader library, listed its document information, looked for comment objects and a metadata block, and read the text printed on the page. Then we ran Check Before Send on each file.

Export setting	Comment text on the page	Deleted text on the page	Author and title in the PDF
Markup, properties on	Yes	Yes	Yes
Markup, properties off	Yes	Yes	No
No markup, properties on	No	No	Yes
No markup, properties off	No	No	No

Three things stood out:

1. With markup on, the comment and the deleted sentence were printed as part of the page. They were not hidden data: anyone who opens the PDF can read them.
2. With markup off, the comment and the deleted sentence were gone. The inserted text was still on the page.
3. In all four files, the PDF still named the app that made it and the time it was made. Switching "Document properties" off removed the author and title, not those two.

What was not in any of the files

The source file also held an invented company and a reviewer name, on the comment, on the changes and as the last person to save. Neither appeared in any of the four PDFs, in the document information or in the page text. The files had no comment objects and no separate metadata block. This is a result for our test file, not a rule for every file.

What Check Before Send reported

On the two PDFs exported with document properties, Check Before Send listed the document information with the invented author, the title, the app name and the two times. On the two without, it listed only the app name and the times. It did not list the printed comment or the printed deletion, because that is visible page text rather than hidden data, so reading the pages is your job.

While running this test we found that our own checker wrongly told us that every Word-made PDF held "earlier saves" of the file. The PDFs Word wrote here end with a second, empty section, and our check counted it as an earlier save. We fixed that on 2026-10-13 and added a test that uses a real Word PDF.

Limits of this test

We tested one version of Word, on Windows, with one small document. We did not test Word for Mac, Word on the web, other versions, or printing to a PDF printer, and they may behave differently. Microsoft's page treats Word on the web separately and says the desktop app gives more control over the PDF options.

If you want the comments out of the Word file itself, Microsoft's Document Inspector is the tool it documents for finding comments and revision marks, along with document properties and hidden text. This guide did not test it.

Check the PDF before you send it

Open the PDF itself and read it, not the Word file. Then drop it into Check Before Send. It lists what it found, you choose what to remove, and it writes a new copy and runs a second scan on that copy. "Verified not found" means that second scan found nothing, not that the file is guaranteed clean.

The file is read inside your browser and is not uploaded; the Trust Center explains how to confirm that. If the question is about tracked changes in Word itself, see why you can't always see tracked changes, or browse the other guides.