Here's how to use Document Inspector to expunge your annotations, edits and more in Word docs.

Paul Somerson, Contributor

July 4, 2011

1 Min Read

Some Word documents might contain information that you don't want to distribute. They contain a history of all activity in the document.

The history of every editor and every edit is hidden in the metadata. That means it's buried in headers or otherwise in hidden text. Possibly you'd like to keep this information confidential. Especially at work.

Type [ALT]+[F], [E], [I] to launch Word's Document Inspector. Click the Inspect button and view the results. Word lets you choose which parts of the document you want to expunge. For instance, you could delete all comments, revisions, versions, and annotations--but leave in the watermarks. Make sure you want to delete the items because some changes can’t be undone.

If you want to keep your Word documents clean of information you'd rather not distribute, this is an easy way to remove hidden history.

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