Remove tracked changes and comments before you send a document.

Word shows tracked changes and comments in a view you choose, and the view is not the file. Microsoft's page on tracking changes says it plainly: "Hiding changes doesn't remove them from the document." Its page on accepting changes adds that choosing the No Markup view "only temporarily hides changes. They will be visible again the next time someone opens the document."

So a draft sent with markup hidden carries every deletion, every earlier wording and every comment to whoever opens it, each one with the author's name and the time it was made.

1. Save a copy under a new name, and work on the copy.
2. Decide each change first. Anything you want rejected, reject now: the next step accepts the rest.
3. On the Review tab, go to Tracking, open the Accept list and choose Accept All Changes, per Microsoft. Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking also turns tracking off, so new edits are not recorded.
4. Delete the comments: Microsoft's comments page says "click the arrow by Delete, and then click Delete All Comments in Document."
5. On Windows, run File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document, which checks for "revision marks from tracked changes, comments, ink annotations, or versions" and for document properties such as the author, per Microsoft's Document Inspector page. Remove what it finds, and save.

An ABA ethics opinion from 2006, Formal Opinion 06-442, found that the Model Rules do not forbid a lawyer from reading the metadata in a document the other side sends, and, as the ABA Journal reported, urged lawyers sending electronic documents "to take steps to eliminate metadata from those documents." Whatever the rules say about the receiving side, the safe course is the same: send a file that has nothing to find.

Word can also strip personal details every time you save. Microsoft's privacy options page describes an option that "removes personal information from the file properties when you save the file", under File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options. It covers the properties, not the tracked changes.

Exporting to PDF after accepting the changes leaves the markup behind, because the PDF holds the page as it looks. Before you send it, page through the PDF for coloured changes or comment balloons; if any are there, the markup was showing when you exported. The PDF also takes the author from the Word file, so clean the Word file before you export. See and remove PDF metadata covers the PDF's own fields.

FileSanity's document cleaner shows, in your browser, who left comments and who made tracked changes in a .docx, .xlsx, .pptx or OpenDocument file. It removes the comments with their authors' names, accepts the tracked changes so deleted words leave the file, turns tracking off, and empties the author, last editor and company. The rest of the text is copied as it was. Reject anything you do not want accepted in Word first. The file is not uploaded.

Clean a file

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.

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