- Why does my Word document contain metadata even after I share it?
- When you save a .docx, Word automatically embeds the author name (from your Windows or macOS user account), the last-modified-by field, and optionally your company name. If track changes was ever enabled — even briefly — Word stores every insertion, deletion, and the reviewer's name. Comments retain the commenter's display name. Recipients can read all of this via File → Info → Inspect Document, or simply by opening the XML inside the ZIP. This tool removes all of it before you share.
- What are rsid attributes and why should I remove them?
- rsid stands for Revision Save ID. Word assigns a unique session identifier each time you save, and stamps every paragraph, run, and table cell with that ID. Forensic tools can use these values to reconstruct your editing timeline and link documents created in the same session — even if you deleted the visible track-changes markup. Removing rsid* attributes makes it impossible to correlate edits across multiple documents.
- Will "Accept track changes" delete content I wrote?
- No. The tool accepts all pending insertions (keeps the new text) and rejects all pending deletions (removes the struck-through text) — exactly what you would get by clicking "Accept All Changes" in Word. The final readable document content is preserved. Only the revision markup — author name, date, and the change-tracking wrapper — is stripped.
- Does this tool work on .doc (old Word 97–2003) files?
- No. The .doc format is a binary compound-document format and cannot be processed by JSZip. Only .docx files (Office Open XML) are supported because they are standard ZIP archives containing XML. To clean an old .doc, open it in Word or LibreOffice, save as .docx, then drop it here.
- Can I process multiple files at once?
- Yes. Drop or select as many .docx files as you like. Each file is cleaned independently and downloaded with "-clean" appended to the filename. If you drop ten files you will receive ten separate downloads. File content and structure is otherwise identical to the original.
- Does cleaning break the document formatting or macros?
- Formatting (fonts, styles, images, tables, headers, footers) is untouched — only the metadata XML nodes are modified. VBA macros, if any, are stored in separate binary streams that this tool passes through unmodified. However, if your macros rely on author or revision data they may behave differently. For sensitive legal or financial documents, verify the cleaned file in Word before distributing.