See and remove the metadata in a PDF.
A PDF records who made it, what program made it and when. Some PDFs also keep earlier versions of those fields inside the same file. Here is how to see them, remove them, and know when a PDF is not as clean as it looks.
What a PDF carries
Most PDFs have a document information dictionary with up to eight fields: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator (the program the document was written in), Producer (the program that made the PDF), CreationDate and ModDate. Many also carry an XMP packet that repeats those fields and can add more.
A PDF exported from Word usually inherits Word's author. So the cleanest fix often starts in the source document: see removing the author from Office files, then export again.
See it
In Acrobat or Acrobat Reader, open the document properties: File > Properties in older versions, Menu > Document properties on Windows or File > Document properties on Mac in newer ones, or press Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on Mac). The Description tab shows title, author, subject and keywords, and Additional Metadata shows the XMP. Adobe's page on PDF properties describes the fields.
On a Mac, Preview shows the same under Tools > Show Inspector, or the Info button in newer versions, per Apple's Preview guide.
Remove it with Acrobat Pro
Acrobat Pro has a sanitize command. From Adobe's help: go to All tools > Redact a PDF, choose Sanitize document, then Remove all, and save under a new name. Selectively remove lets you choose items in the Hidden Information panel instead. Sanitizing removes more than metadata, including comments and hidden layers, so check the result before you send it.
Why editing the fields is not always enough
A PDF can be saved by appending changes to the end of the file instead of rewriting it. The old values stay in the bytes and can be recovered. The exiftool documentation is plain about its own behaviour: its PDF page says edits are written as an incremental update, are reversible, and that old information is never actually deleted from the file. It suggests rewriting the file with qpdf afterwards:
exiftool -all= in.pdf
qpdf --linearize in.pdf out.pdfSend out.pdf, not in.pdf. Then open it again and check the properties are empty.
In order, for a PDF going outside
- Remove the author and company from the source document, if you have it, and export the PDF again.
- Open the new PDF's properties (Ctrl+D or Cmd+D) and read the Description tab and Additional Metadata.
- If a name, a company or a program you did not expect is still there, sanitize with Acrobat Pro, or remove it with exiftool and rewrite the file with qpdf.
- Open the file you will actually send and read the properties once more.
Four steps, a few minutes, and the second and fourth are the ones people skip.
When you need more than a cleaner
If the PDF will be read by someone with a reason to dig, such as the other side in a dispute, use Acrobat Pro's sanitize or rebuild the PDF from a cleaned source document. Metadata is only one part: hidden layers, form data, attachments and text under a black box are content, and redacting them is a separate job.
Or clean it here
FileSanity's PDF cleaner shows the document information and XMP in your browser and blanks them in place, including copies left by earlier saves, so the PDF opens exactly as before. PDFs saved from Word or Acrobat keep the XMP, and often the document information, in compressed streams; FileSanity unpacks, blanks and repacks those to the same size. An encrypted PDF is the exception: it shows what it found, keeps it, and says the file is not fully clean instead of calling it done.
Checked
Menu paths checked on 9 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.