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Before Office 2007, Word, Excel and PowerPoint saved files as .doc, .xls and .ppt, a binary format that is a small file system in one file. Two hidden property streams hold the title, subject, author, keywords, comments, the person who last saved it, the company, the manager, the program and every date. Excel and PowerPoint store the user name in one more place. This tool blanks all of those in place, so the file has the same size and layout and opens as before with empty fields. Drop a .doc, .xls, .ppt or .pps file in the box above to see what it holds.
What an old Office file remembers
| Where | What is stored | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Summary properties | Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, Comments, Template, Last saved by, Revision number, Application, editing time, created, saved and printed dates | Author “J. Alvarez”, Last saved by “Sam” |
| Document summary | Category, Manager, Company, content type and status | Company “Northwind Ltd” |
| Custom properties | Fields added by a company or a document system | ClientId = 4471 |
| User name (Excel) | The write-access record: who last saved the workbook | Jane Doe |
| User name (PowerPoint) | The Current User record, in ANSI and Unicode | Jane Doe |
| Thumbnail | A small picture of the first page, when the file has one | A readable preview of page one |
Where the details come from
- Your Office account and licence supplies the author and company.
- Templates carry their author.
- Copying a file keeps who wrote the original.
- Old files from colleagues often carry their names for years.
What the remover deletes, and what it keeps
| Removed | Kept |
|---|---|
| Title, subject, author, keywords, comments, template | All text, cells, slides and formatting |
| Last saved by, revision number, application name | Formulas, charts and pictures |
| Created, saved and printed dates and total editing time | The size of the file and its layout |
| Company, manager, category | Comments and tracked changes (not touched) |
| Custom property values | |
| User name in Excel and PowerPoint | |
| First-page thumbnail |
How to remove metadata from an old Office file
- Drop your old Office files in the box at the top of the page, or choose them from your device. You can add many files at once.
- Press the clean button. Each file shows what was found and removed.
- Read the report. Anything that could still identify someone is listed as remaining, so nothing is hidden from you.
- Download the clean copy. One file downloads as it is; several come as one ZIP.
Is it safe to clean an old Office file online?
Yes. Old Office files are cleaned entirely in your browser: the file is read, rewritten and handed back as a download without leaving your device. You can confirm it by opening the network tab of your browser while you clean a file, where no upload appears. If you use the API or the MCP server, the file is processed on our server, held only for the length of the request, and deleted within minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Will the file still open?
Yes. The tool only overwrites values with blanks and never changes the structure or the size, so Office opens the file as before, with empty author and company fields.
Does it work on .dot, .xlt and .pot templates?
Rename them to .doc, .xls or .ppt first. They use the same format.
Why does Word show 0 or a blank date afterwards?
The dates were cleared on purpose. Office shows an empty date for a value of zero.
Is a password-protected file supported?
Property streams are not encrypted in the old format, so they can be cleaned. The user name inside an encrypted Excel workbook cannot be reached, and the report says so.
Can I clean old Office files with the API?
Yes. Send the file to POST /api/v1/clean/document with your API key and its name in the X-Filename header. It returns the clean file and reports what was removed in the response headers. The MCP server does the same for AI assistants.
How many files can I clean?
Guests and free accounts have a daily allowance and a file-size limit, shown above the drop box. Paid plans raise both. Documents, images, PDFs and audio share one daily allowance.