What does Word's remove-personal-information do?

By Check Before Send · Updated 13 October 2026

It removes names, not content. Microsoft documents the setting as removing all user information from comments, revisions and the file's properties when you save. In our test the author, the last editor and the company were blanked and the names on a comment and a tracked change were replaced by a generic label. The comment's text and the inserted words stayed.

This guide shows what we tested, what Microsoft says, and what that setting does not cover.

What Microsoft says

Microsoft's reference for Word describes the property as true when Word removes all user information from comments, revisions and the Properties dialog box upon saving a document. That wording is about user information, meaning who. It does not say the comments or the revisions are removed.

Microsoft's Document Inspector page is a separate tool. It lists inspectors for comments, revision marks, document properties and personal information, headers and footers, hidden text, custom XML data and invisible content, and it can remove what it finds. It also notes that its hidden-text inspector cannot detect text hidden by other methods, such as white text on a white background.

What we tested

We ran this on Microsoft Word 2016 on Windows, with invented content. We made a document with an author and company set, one comment and one tracked insertion. We saved it once as it was, turned the personal-information setting on, and saved a second copy. Then we opened both files' internal parts.

In the file	Before	After the setting was on
Author in the properties	The author we typed	Blank
Last modified by	The reviewer name	Blank
Company	The company we typed	Blank
Name on the comment	The reviewer name	A generic label
Name on the tracked insertion	The reviewer name	A generic label
Comment text	Present	Present
Inserted text and the change record	Present	Present

We then ran Check Before Send on the second copy. It still listed the comment, with its text, and the tracked change, and it listed the creation and save times. We let it make a copy and scanned that a second time: no findings remained.

What this means

The setting hides who wrote things. It does not take out what was written.
The times of creation and last save were still in the file in our test.
If the content is the concern, the comment text and revision text need to be removed as well.

Limits

We tested one version of Word, on Windows, through its automation interface rather than the Options screen, on one small file. We did not test other versions, other settings or Word for Mac or the web. The label that replaced the names follows Word's display language, so yours will differ.

Check the file before you send it

Drop the Word file into Check Before Send. It lists each comment, change and property it finds with the values shown, 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. For related questions, see who last edited a Word document, or browse the other guides.

Sources

More guides

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