Check Word Metadata, Comments and Hidden Text

Review a copy in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Document Inspector is a feature of Microsoft Word. Hidden Word Scanner is an independent web scanner, not that feature or a Microsoft service. Use both alongside manual review.

In desktop Word for Windows, save a copy, then use File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document. Select the categories to inspect and review the results before choosing Remove All; removal may not be reversible. Inspect the copy again afterward. These are Windows instructions; menus and available features vary by platform.

For display settings on Windows, use File > Options > Display; on Mac, use Word > Preferences > View. Enable hidden-text display where available. The Home Show/Hide button exposes formatting marks; it is not an exhaustive content inspection.

On Review, choose All Markup and show insertions and deletions for all reviewers. Examine comments separately and read each revision in context. No Markup only hides revisions; accepting or rejecting changes is a separate editing decision.

Also examine properties, headers, footers, tables, notes, text boxes and object references in the original. Microsoft notes that Document Inspector’s hidden-text check does not detect every concealment method, such as white text on a white background. The Microsoft references below explain these controls.

What a finding does and does not establish

Finding presence and severity are different. Information, Review and Suspicious labels prioritize attention; they are not verdicts about safety, intent or misconduct. The safe teaching sample deliberately produces suspicious visibility findings.

As a Word metadata checker, the scanner reports supported stored values. An Author property can come from a template or an earlier editor and does not verify authorship or identity. Document description (Comments property) is metadata, distinct from a review comment.

An embedded-object finding records an object in the DOCX package. It does not mean the scanner inspected that object’s contents or found malware. External destinations are not opened, embedded files are not recursively inspected, and macros are not executed.

Current DOCX coverage and gaps

Supported checks include hidden, directly near-white and directly tiny text in body paragraphs, including nested body tables, and default header/footer paragraphs, plus immediate character-style hidden settings. Direct hidden-formatting overrides are respected, and merged table cells are inspected once. Other checks report nonempty comments, main-document insertions and deletions, note and text-box text, supported drawing alternate text and fully transparent drawing text.

Reported properties include Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, document description and Category, plus custom properties. Empty and selected generator-default core values are omitted. Supported external link/object relationships and embedded-object presence are reported; this is not an inventory of every package relationship.

Run-formatting checks skip header/footer tables and first/even-page headers and footers. Formatting inheritance is incomplete: base character styles, paragraph styles and document defaults are not resolved. Shared headers/footers can be repeated or have inaccurate recorded part names.

Revisions outside the main document are not separately classified; some appear only as note text. Last editor, timestamps, revision number, language and other core/application properties are not surfaced. Move and formatting revisions and exhaustive Word layout are unsupported. Zero findings does not mean a document is clean or every part was successfully inspected.

Use recorded document structure when page mapping is unavailable. Rendered previews are scanner-generated references; they may be unavailable or differ from Word pagination. An annotated PDF is a review artifact, not a cleaned DOCX. The scanner does not modify your source file.

Supported uploads, privacy and next actions

For Word, upload an unencrypted DOCX. Legacy DOC, macro-enabled DOCM and password-encrypted documents are not supported inputs. Preserve the original if you make a converted copy for review.

Uploads are processed on the server, not solely in your browser. The temporary source upload is deleted after scanning, including scan failures. Reports and associated preview artifacts are temporary, restricted to the browser session that created them, and expire after 15 minutes. No account is required.

Review the original in Word and preserve it. Export findings before expiry if needed, or use Delete temporary report to remove the stored report and associated artifacts early. Deletion and expiry do not remove your original or copies you downloaded. Keep exported evidence appropriately private.