ScrubDrop › Guides

Alt text and object names in Word, Excel and PowerPoint: the descriptions and picture names a file keeps out of sight

Last updated: 29 October 2026

This page is about the text that goes with an object. What a photo keeps inside the image file, such as its location and camera, is in photos in Word and PowerPoint files; hidden slides and speaker notes in speaker notes and hidden slides; the address behind a linked picture or shape in hyperlinks in Word and PowerPoint; and what goes into a PDF in exporting to PDF.

Alt text is read, not shown

Microsoft's page Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object explains what it is for: "Alt text helps people with visual disabilities understand pictures and other graphical content. When someone using a screen reader comes across a picture in a document, they will hear the alt text describing the picture". It is opened from the object: "Right-click the object and select View Alt Text", or the object's format menu, such as Picture Format, and Alt Text. For an Excel PivotTable, the same page puts it under PivotTable Options, with a Title and a Description.

Because it is not on the page, alt text is easy to forget once it is written. It is meant to be read, and it should be: what matters before you send a file is whether what it says is still right for the reader. Text written for an internal version (who is in a photo, what a screenshot shows of a system, which client a chart was made for) stays with the object when the file goes out.

Alt text that Office wrote, and titles from older versions

Alt text is not always typed by a person. The same page says: "If you don't want automatically generated alt text to be added to inserted pictures, you can turn off the automatic alt text option", under File › Options › Accessibility in the Windows versions. Its Mac section adds that you can generate it by hand from the Alt Text pane, and that if it is generated you should "remember to review and edit it in the Alt Text pane", and remove the note Office may have added there saying that the generated content may be incorrect. A generated description says what the picture showed when it was described, in words you did not choose.

The page's steps for Office 2016 have two boxes: "In the Description box, enter an explanation", and "If you want, in the Title box, enter a brief summary." The steps for current versions describe a single text box for pictures and shapes. The file format still has both: Microsoft's Open XML documentation for a drawing object's properties lists a description, descr, and a title, title (docPr). A file that has been edited for years can hold a title written in an older version; look for it in the file as well as in the pane.

Word tables can carry text of this kind too. The standard gives a table a caption and a description, tblCaption and tblDescription, inside the table's properties, which are not shown on the page (tblCaption, tblDescription).

Object names and the Selection pane

Every object also has a name. Microsoft's page Use the Selection pane to manage objects in documents says: "The Selection pane displays the name of each inserted object with the numbered order each was inserted", and "After you select an item in the Selection pane, you can select the item again to change the name of the item." It opens with Alt+F10, from Select (Word and PowerPoint) or Find & Select (Excel) on the Home tab.

A name is whatever the object was given: the default the pane shows, a label someone typed to find it on a busy slide, or a file name. The standard quoted in Microsoft's Open XML documentation names the picture in its PowerPoint and Excel examples after a .jpg file, and describes that element as non-visual properties, which allow "additional information that does not affect the appearance of the picture to be stored" (cNvPr, ISO/IEC 29500-1, 1st edition); in a workbook, "all the data about the parent which does not affect its display within the spreadsheet" (xdr:cNvPr). A picture's file name can say where it came from, whose it was, or which version it replaced.

Hidden objects stay in the file

The Selection pane can also hide objects (in Word, not those in line with text, which the page says cannot be hidden there). Microsoft's page says: "When you hide an object in a document, the object remains in the file, but it's no longer visible in the document", and warns that "it is easy to entirely forget about a hidden object." In the file, hiding is a flag on the same element that holds the name and the alt text: Microsoft's documentation for docPr describes hidden as a "Flag determining to show or hide this element". A hidden object keeps its content, its alt text and its name.

Document Inspector's Invisible Content check finds objects "formatted as invisible", as Microsoft's page Remove hidden data and personal information by inspecting documents, presentations, or workbooks describes it. That page does not list alt text or object names among the items Document Inspector checks in Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Alt text goes into an accessible PDF

Microsoft's page Create accessible PDFs says accessibility tags let people who use screen readers "read and navigate a document with Tables of Contents, hyperlinks, bookmarks, alt text, and so on", and that Office uses what you fixed with the Accessibility Checker "to create accessibility tags in the PDF". The option is "Document structure tags for accessibility", under Options when you save as PDF. Keep it on: a PDF without it is harder to use for people who rely on it. Read the alt text before you save instead, because the PDF carries what the file says.

Where each one is in the file

These are the usual part names; [Content_Types].xml lists each part with its type if the names differ. The alt text of an Excel PivotTable is kept elsewhere, and the searches below do not find it: read it in Excel.

Check in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

1. Work on a copy. Open the Selection pane (Alt+F10) and read the name of every object, on every slide or sheet. Show any hidden object, look at it, and delete it if it should not go.
2. Rename objects whose names say more than they should, as the Selection pane page describes.
3. For each picture, shape, chart and SmartArt graphic, open the Alt Text pane and read the text. Edit it for the reader who will get the file, or remove it if the object is decorative and mark it so.
4. For Excel PivotTables, read the Title and Description under PivotTable Options › Alt Text.
5. If you insert pictures often and do not want descriptions added for you, turn off the automatic alt text option, as Microsoft's page describes.

Check a copy of the file

1. Make a copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it.
2. Search every part for descr=" and title=", and read each value; in a Word file, search for alt=" as well, which older shapes use. In a Word file, search word/ for tblCaption and tblDescription as well.
3. Search the same parts for name=" inside docPr and cNvPr, and for hidden="1".
4. Finding nothing this way shows only that these searches found nothing, not that the file holds nothing else.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads the file in your browser; it is not uploaded. It does not change alt text, titles or object names, or a Word table's caption and description, and does not list them as a kind of hidden data, in either version; in PowerPoint, a shape's name can appear in what it lists about that shape. They go only with an object that is removed: a picture deleted with tracked changes, when the free version accepts the changes, or, in ScrubDrop Pro, an object in a category you chose, such as hidden sheets, slides and shapes, objects outside the slide, pivot tables or speaker notes. Change them in Word, Excel or PowerPoint as above.

One setting does not stay: ScrubDrop does not recognise the mark that an object is decorative. Where it finds it, it lists it under the parts and markup it does not keep, as an extension in the part, and does not write it, in either version. In the copy, an object you marked decorative has neither alt text nor the mark; look at it in Office after cleaning.

For free, one file at a time, it lists the kinds of hidden data it supports and removes the document properties and comments, and accepts tracked changes. Among what it lists are hidden objects ("hidden picture or shape" in Word, "hidden drawing object" in Excel, and in PowerPoint "hidden shape" with the shape's name) and the metadata inside pictures, such as Exif. Removing hidden content and picture metadata is part of ScrubDrop Pro: a hidden object is removed with its alt text and name, and the metadata inside an image is removed while the picture stays. Where a hidden object cannot be taken out on its own (in Word, for example, inside a group or beside visible objects in one drawing), it writes no file and says why. The result is read again with separate parsers, and a file that does not pass is not offered.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft pages linked on this page were checked on 29 October 2026. ScrubDrop is not affiliated with Microsoft.