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Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

Remove Personal Information and Metadata from a Presentation Before Distribution

SUMMARY: Before you distribute your PowerPoint 2007 presentations, inspect them for information that may prove embarrassing or violate your privacy.

Think twice before distributing a Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 presentation you or a group of people have created. Presentations may contain all types of information that you may not want third-parties to see, such as:

* Editing notes and comments
* Personal information
* Custom XML data
* Content marked as "invisible"
* Content formatted outside of the slide area yet still in your presentation
* Presenter's notes

PowerPoint 2007 contains a document inspector that can warn you of such information and optionally remove it.

1. Save your presentation. You may wish to save a backup copy in case you need to revert some of the changes.

2. Click the "Office" button.

3. When the popup appears, click "Prepare" - "Inspect Document".

Accessing the PowerPoint 2007 Document Inspector

4. The "Document Inspector" dialog box appears. Check all items then click the "Inspect" button.

PowerPoint 2007's Document Inspector

5. The Document Inspector will then display the results of the inspection. Next to each item where results were found, click the "Remove All" button as desired to remove the private / personal / hidden information.

PowerPoint 2007 Document Inspector results

6. When done, you can click "Reinspect" to check the document once more to ensure the inspector did not miss anything, or hit "Close" to exit the Inspector.

While the Document Inspector should be able to remove virtually all hidden information, you may still want to glance through presentations before distributing them to help ensure nothing was missed during the inspection.