How to remove comments and reviewer names before sending
Comments are one of the easiest ways to leak information out of an Office file. They carry reviewer names, timestamps and the internal back-and-forth you never meant to share — and deleting them in the app doesn't always take the author records with them. Here's how to remove them cleanly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Where comments actually live
A Word, Excel or PowerPoint file is a package of XML parts, and comments sit in their own dedicated parts inside that package. In Word they live in word/comments*.xml, alongside a word/people.xml part that stores reviewer identities and cloud account IDs — a record almost no cleaner touches. In Excel they're in xl/comments*.xml, with newer threaded comments in xl/threadedComments/ and reviewer identities in xl/persons/. In PowerPoint they're under ppt/comments/, with authors listed in authors.xml.
Each comment records who wrote it and when, and the identity parts tie that back to a named person and, in the cloud case, an account. If you're sending the file outside your team, this is the internal discussion — and the list of who was in the room — that you probably want gone.
Why deleting the comments isn't enough
The obvious move is to open the file and delete the visible comments. That removes the bubbles, but it does not always remove the associated author or person records. Word's people.xml, Excel's xl/persons and PowerPoint's authors.xml can survive a delete-all, leaving reviewer names and cloud IDs sitting in the package after the comments themselves look gone.
people.xml / persons / authors.xml parts can outlive the comments, so a reviewer's name and cloud account ID may still be recoverable from the file even though it looks clean on screen. The safe path is to strip the comment parts and re-scan.
Check and strip comments — without uploading
The reason people reach for an online tool is precisely that the file is sensitive — which makes uploading it to someone's server the wrong move. Barecopy detects comments across DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, with the author names attached to each, entirely inside your browser. The file is never transmitted; you can switch off your internet after the page loads and it still works.
See who's in your file
Drop your .docx, .xlsx or .pptx on Barecopy. It lists the comments and reviewer names it finds, then removes them on your device.
What Barecopy removes, exactly
Because removing comments changes the document, it's an explicit, opt-in step rather than something done behind your back. When you choose to run it, Barecopy's deep-clean pass removes:
- the comment parts themselves —
word/comments*.xml,xl/comments*.xmlandxl/threadedComments/,ppt/comments/; - the identity records —
word/people.xml,xl/persons/andauthors.xml; - the in-content references that point at them —
commentRangeStart,commentRangeEndandcommentReferencemarkers left in the document body; - the leftover relationships and content-type overrides, so the application doesn't show a "repair" prompt when the file is reopened.
It then re-scans the cleaned file to confirm the comments and identities are actually gone, not just hidden. Everything runs 100% in the browser — the file is never uploaded.
Frequently asked
Do comments include the reviewer's name?
Yes. Every comment records the author's display name and a timestamp. On top of that, Word keeps reviewer identities — names and cloud account IDs — in a separate people.xml part; Excel uses xl/persons and PowerPoint uses authors.xml. Almost no cleaner touches those identity parts, so a name can survive even when the visible comments are gone.
Does deleting a comment remove the author record?
Not always. Removing the visible comments clears the bubbles, but the author or person records can be left behind in the package. The reliable fix is to strip the comment parts and the identity records at the file level, then re-scan to confirm nothing remains.
Can I do this without uploading the file?
Yes. The file is processed by JavaScript in your own browser tab and never sent anywhere. Open your browser's developer tools, watch the network while you clean a file: nothing leaves.