How to remove the author name from a Word document
Every .docx quietly stores who made it — your name, your company, how long you spent editing, and sometimes a preview image of the first page. Here's how to see all of it and take it out, including the fields Word's own tool leaves behind.
What Word actually stores
A Word file is a package of XML. Inside it, a properties record keeps the author and "last modified by" names, the company and manager, the total editing time, the created and last-printed dates, any custom properties your organisation added, and an embedded thumbnail of page one. Most of it is written automatically from your Office account — you never typed it, but it ships with every copy you send.
This is not theoretical. Author names in document metadata have surfaced in court filings and news leaks, and freelancers have shown clients how many draft revisions a file went through without meaning to. If you're sending a document to someone outside your organisation, this is the information you probably want gone.
Method 1 — Word's built-in inspector
Word ships with a Document Inspector that removes the most common fields:
- Open the document and go to
File → Info. - Select
Check for Issues → Inspect Document. - Run it, then choose Remove All next to "Document Properties and Personal Information".
- Save the file.
File → Info and check the fields are empty.Method 2 — check and strip every field, without uploading
The reason people reach for an online tool is precisely that the file is sensitive — which makes uploading it to someone's server the wrong move. Barecopy solves that by running entirely in your browser: you drop the file on the page, it shows you every field the document reveals, and it hands back a clean copy. The file is never transmitted. You can switch off your internet after the page loads and it still works.
See what your document reveals
Drop your .docx on Barecopy. It lists the author, company, edit time, custom properties and thumbnail, then removes them — locally, on your device.
What removing metadata does not cover
Two things are content, not metadata, and no metadata cleaner should silently touch them: tracked changes and comments. They contain editor names and deleted text, so accept or reject changes and delete comments inside Word before sending. Barecopy detects both and warns you rather than removing them behind your back.
Frequently asked
Does the author name stay in a PDF exported from Word?
Yes — the author, the creating application and the timestamps are carried into the PDF's metadata. Clean the Word file before exporting, or clean the PDF afterwards. Barecopy handles PDFs too.
Will removing metadata change how my document looks?
No. Only the hidden properties are removed; the text, formatting and layout are untouched.
Can I clean several documents at once?
Yes. Barecopy's Pro tier cleans a whole folder in one go and gives you the files back as a ZIP with a verification report listing exactly what was removed from each one.
Is it really private?
The file is processed by JavaScript in your own browser tab and never sent anywhere. Open your browser's developer tools, watch the network while you clean a file: nothing leaves.