A document can look clean on screen and still be carrying old comments, previous prices and other people’s edits underneath.
Every sophisticated recipient of a Word document knows the same trick – open it, click ‘All Markup,’ and see what was hiding underneath.
A file that looks clean on screen can still carry tracked changes and comments switched to ‘Simple Markup’ rather than deleted – every internal edit, every “can we soften this?” comment, every number revised down before it went out.
There are real cases of a client opening a proposal and finding the previous, higher price still sitting in a deleted-but-recoverable comment thread. In a negotiation, that hands the other side your walk-away position.
This is metadata risk, and for EAs who send board packs, contracts and client-facing documents on an executive’s behalf, it’s worth understanding properly.
Where the risk is highest
Board packs and contracts sit at the top, for different reasons. Board packs are often stitched together from multiple executives’ contributions, each carrying their own tracked changes, comments and prior-meeting content still buried in the file – and they’re frequently sent to external directors or auditors who have every reason to check the properties.
Contracts are risky because ‘last modified by’ details and revision history can expose exactly who changed what and when during a negotiation, which is precisely the information the other side would love to have.
Proposals are a close third, especially where a template’s been reused from a previous client and might still carry that name in a footer or custom property.
The one habit worth building in
Before a document leaves the building go to File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document, in Word, Excel or PowerPoint.
Run it on a copy and remove what it flags. It takes under a minute once it’s routine and it catches what you can’t see just by scrolling – hidden comments, old authors, template names, hidden worksheets.
Treat it the same way you’d treat checking the ‘To’ field before sending a sensitive email. Not optional or something you do if there’s time.
Why converting to PDF doesn’t make it safe
Converting to PDF feels final and locked, which makes it a genuinely dangerous assumption. This isn’t a privacy filter, only a format change.
A PDF export can still carry author details, comments, bookmarks and hidden layers from the original file. And if the source document wasn’t cleaned up first, some of that carries straight across.
The right order is to clean the Office file with Document Inspector first before exporting to PDF. Then glance at the PDF’s own properties before sending.
The template problem, and what AI changes
Templates are a multiplier, not a one-off risk. If a proposal or contract template has a stale company name, a former employee listed as author or an old client’s matter number sitting in a custom property, every document built from it inherits the problem.
It’s worth periodically opening File > Info on the template itself, not just the finished documents – one dirty template can contaminate a year’s worth of client-facing work.
It’s also increasingly relevant with AI drafting tools now embedded in Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. Documents assembled or edited with AI assistance can pull in metadata or reference content from source files in ways that aren’t always obvious on the visible page.
The ‘inspect before it leaves’ habit matters more now than it did five years ago, not less.
