Barecopy vs Microsoft's Document Inspector
Word's built-in Document Inspector is a genuinely useful tool, and if you already run it on every file you are ahead of most people. This is an honest look at what it does well, where it stops, and what a browser-based cleaner adds — written by the people who make one, so read it with that in mind.
What Document Inspector is good at
Document Inspector ships inside desktop Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Run it from File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document, tick the categories you care about, and it will remove document properties and personal information, comments, revisions and versions, hidden text, custom XML data and more. When you actually run it and select those categories, it removes them properly — this is not a tool that pretends to work. Credit where it is due.
If your workflow is entirely inside Office on Windows, you send Office files only, and you remember to inspect every document before it leaves, Document Inspector covers most of what matters. For a lot of people that is enough, and it costs nothing beyond the Office licence you already have.
Where it stops
The gaps are practical rather than a failure to remove things:
- It needs Office installed and open. You cannot inspect a file you have received without opening it in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and there is no option on a machine without Office — a locked-down work laptop, a phone, a Chromebook.
- It is per file and manual. There is no built-in way to clean a folder of files in one pass, and it is easy to forget on the one document that matters.
- The Mac version is more limited than the Windows one, and can leave custom properties and the embedded preview thumbnail behind.
- It tells you it ran, not that you are clean. There is no second pass that re-reads the saved file and confirms the fields are gone, and no record of what was removed — which matters if you ever need to show a file was cleaned before it was sent.
- It only covers Office documents. PDFs, JPEG and HEIC photos, videos and SVGs are outside its scope entirely — and those carry metadata too, from GPS coordinates in a photo to the author in a PDF exported from Word.
Side by side
| Document Inspector | Barecopy | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs without installing Office | Nopart of desktop Office | Yesany modern browser |
| Inspect a file you received | Only by opening it in Office | Yesfree, in your browser |
| Removes author / company / edit time | Yes | Yes |
| Flattens tracked changes & comments | Yes, when run | Yes, opt-in |
Removes people.xml reviewer identities | Not consistently | Yes |
| Re-scans to confirm the file is clean | No | Yesverifies after cleaning |
| Record of what was removed | No | Yesoptional PDF report + SHA-256 |
| PDFs, photos, HEIC, video, SVG | No | Yes |
| Batch a whole folder | No | YesPro |
| File never leaves your device | Yeslocal app | Yesin-browser, CSP-enforced |
"Not consistently" reflects behaviour we have seen vary by Office version and platform; check your own version if a specific field matters to you. Both tools keep your file on your own machine — that is a point in Document Inspector's favour over cleaners that upload.
How to think about it
Document Inspector and Barecopy are not really rivals for the same minute of your day. Document Inspector is the thing built into the app you are already in; Barecopy is the thing you reach for when you want to check a file quickly, when it is not an Office file, when you are on a machine without Office, or when you want the result verified and recorded rather than taken on trust.
The two combine well: inspect in Word if you like, then drop the file on Barecopy to confirm nothing survived and to get a record of it. Seeing zero fields on a second, independent pass is worth more than assuming the first pass worked.
Check what a file reveals — free, no upload
Drop a document or photo on Barecopy. It lists every identifying field it finds and, if you want, hands back a verified clean copy. The file never leaves your browser.
Open Barecopy →Frequently asked
Does Document Inspector remove tracked changes?
Yes, when you run it and select the revisions category. The practical catches are that you have to run it on every file, it needs desktop Office, the Mac version is more limited, and it does not confirm afterwards that the file is clean. Using Accept All instead is not the same — that leaves the history recoverable.
So why use Barecopy at all?
For files that are not Office documents, for machines without Office, for a quick inspection of a file you have received, and for the verification and record — a re-scan that confirms the fields are gone plus an optional report listing exactly what was removed.
Is my file uploaded to Barecopy's servers?
No. Everything runs in JavaScript inside your browser tab, and a Content-Security-Policy blocks the page from sending file contents anywhere. Open your developer tools, watch the network while you clean a file: nothing leaves.
Is this comparison biased?
We make Barecopy, so treat it as a considered case, not a neutral one. We have tried to be fair about what Document Inspector does well — it removes what it removes properly, and it keeps your file local. The honest gaps are reach and confirmation, not capability.