Check your CV file before you send it.
Your name belongs on a CV. What does not belong is the friend's comment in the margin, the job title you deleted, or a file name that says which company you wrote it for. Here is what to check.
What a CV file can carry
- Comments and tracked changes from whoever helped you edit it, with their name. Hidden markup is still in the file: see remove tracked changes and comments.
- Author and last modified by: taken from the user name of whichever copy of Office saved it, per Microsoft. If you started from someone else's file or a work computer, that may not be you.
- Company, editing time and revision count in the file's properties, shown under File > Info, per Microsoft.
- The file name. "CV_for_Acme_v7_final.docx" tells the next employer you applied to Acme, and how many drafts it took.
Before you send it
- Accept or reject every tracked change and delete every comment.
- Open File > Info and read the properties on the right; Show All Properties adds Company and Manager. On Windows, Check for Issues > Inspect Document removes them, per Microsoft.
- Save it as a PDF unless the employer asks for Word, and give it a plain name: your name and "CV".
- Open the PDF's properties (Ctrl+D, or Cmd+D on a Mac) and check the author is you and nothing else is there you did not expect.
Or clean it here
FileSanity's cleaner reads a Word, OpenDocument or PDF CV in your browser and lists the comments, tracked changes, author, company and editing time in plain words, then downloads a clean copy. It also flags a file name with a date, an email address or words like "draft", "final" or "v3", and offers a neutral one. Nothing is uploaded.
Checked
Menu paths checked on 22 October 2026 against the pages linked above. Menus move between versions; when yours differs, the vendor's page is the authority. Found a mistake? Tell us.