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Specifications and fee proposals from an architect or engineer: what a Word or Excel file can carry to the client or contractor

Last updated: 25 October 2026

This page is for an architect, an engineer or a technical consultant who sends a specification, a scope of work, a fee proposal, a cost estimate or a priced schedule to a client, a main contractor or the firms pricing the work. It covers the Word and Excel files; drawings and models are not Office files and are outside it. Filling in a buyer's tender forms and the format rules of a submission are covered in grant and tender files, and other professions' client files in before you send an Office file to a client. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What a specification or fee file can carry

The specification copied from the last project

A specification is rarely written from nothing. It starts as the office's master, or as the specification of a similar job, and the project details are replaced. If Track Changes was on while that was done, the old client, site and product names are still in the file as deleted text. Microsoft's page Accept or reject tracked changes in Word says: "To remove tracked changes, you must accept or reject them. Choosing the No Markup view only temporarily hides changes. They will be visible again the next time someone opens the document." Comments stay too until they are deleted: Microsoft's page Using modern comments in Word says that in the default view "resolved comments are hidden", while the list view "includes all active and resolved comments". A question from the last project's reviewer, marked resolved, can still be read in this one.

Some masters also carry guidance for the person editing them: why a clause is there, which option to choose, what to delete. Where that guidance is formatted as hidden text so that it does not print, it is still in the file. Microsoft's Document Inspector page says "Word documents can contain text that is formatted as hidden text", and adds that its inspector "cannot detect text that was hidden by other methods (for example, white text on a white background)". Delete the guidance in the copy that leaves the office rather than hiding it.

Then search the copy for the last project's name, its client, its address and its reference number, and read the headers, footers, text boxes and tables yourself, since a project title is often typed into a header once and forgotten. What accepting every change can still leave behind is in tracked changes after Accept All.

Fee proposals and estimates: the cost behind the price

A fee proposal or a cost estimate is usually a summary of a larger workbook: staff hours at internal rates, consultants' quotes, a contingency, a margin. The summary is what the client is meant to see; the rest is often on sheets or columns hidden before the file is sent. Microsoft's page Hide or Unhide worksheets says: "The data in hidden worksheets is not visible, but it can still be referenced from other worksheets and workbooks, and you can easily unhide hidden worksheets as needed." The Document Inspector page warns, of removing them: "If you remove hidden rows, columns, or worksheets that contain data, you might change the results of the calculations or formulas in your workbook."

So the cost sheet cannot simply be deleted while the summary still reads it. For a client who only needs to read the figures, send a separate workbook, or a PDF, holding only the summary: copy its range into a new blank workbook, paste it as values (Paste Special › Values), and check the totals against the original. Rows or columns hidden by hand inside that range can come along with it, so unhide everything in the new workbook and delete what should not be there. If the client or contractor must receive working formulas, decide sheet by sheet what they may see, as set out in grant and tender files. A pivot table built from the cost sheet usually keeps its own copy of the rows; see pivot caches keep deleted source data.

A link to the office's rate book

Many offices keep their unit rates or staff rates in one workbook and let each estimate read them through formulas. Each of those formulas is a link to another workbook, and the estimate keeps where that workbook is. Microsoft's page Manage workbook links gives, in its steps for changing a link's source, a reference such as C:\Reports\[Budget.xlsx] as an example of what to look for in the formula bar, and the Document Inspector page says that with external links "The names of the worksheets containing that data are then saved with the workbooks but may not be visible." The same Manage workbook links page says "There is no automatic way to find all workbook links in a workbook."

In the copy you send, open Data › Queries and Connections › Workbook Links and break the links. The page warns that when you do, "all formulas that use the value in the source workbook are converted to their current values", so update the links first if the figures should be current. Then look in Formulas › Name Manager for names that still point at the rate book. What such a path can reveal, user names included, is in external links and full paths.

Whose name is on the file

Microsoft's page Change the author name says: "Every time you create a new document, Word sets the Author property based on the User name setting", that PowerPoint and Excel do the same, and that the User name "also provides the name and initials that are displayed in comments and tracked changes." The Document Inspector page adds that Office maintains "the name of the person who most recently saved a document". A specification that a junior wrote, a senior marked up and an administrator saved can name all three, none of whom is on the title page.

A file made by saving the last project's specification under a new name is not a new document, so its Author can still be whoever wrote the first one, possibly someone who has since left. If the firm sends documents under its own name, change the Author in the copy (File › Info, right-click the author name, Edit Property) and remove the comments and tracked changes, which keep their own names; Last Modified By is written again by whoever saves last. Step by step: removing the author name from a Word file.

The template and the project it came from

A specification started from the office's master keeps what the master held. Word keeps the name of the template a document was based on, and can keep the template's full path, folder names included; Document Inspector lists "Template name" among what it removes from Word documents. The master's custom properties (the Custom tab of File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties) can hold the project number, job name or status of the project it was first made for, and keep them until someone changes them. If a header or title page shows a property through a field or a Document Property content control, check that it shows this project's value. One by one, these are in Word's company, manager, template and custom properties; a master that came from another firm is covered in files from a template vendor or previous employer.

Sending it as PDF

Specifications and fee proposals often go out as PDF, while priced schedules go as workbooks for the contractor to fill in. A PDF leaves out much of the above when it is exported with the right options, but every name and figure visible on the page goes into it as it is. In its Word steps, Microsoft's page Save or convert to PDF or XPS in Office desktop apps says: "To include tracked changes in the PDF, under Publish what, select Document showing markup. Otherwise, make sure Document is selected", and "If you want to include document properties in the PDF, make sure Document properties is selected." For Excel, the same page has you select Options "to choose whether markup should be printed, and to select output options". Clean the Office file first, export with markup and properties left out, and open the PDF's properties in your reader. More in .docx or PDF and metadata when exporting to PDF. A workbook the contractor must price is sent as a workbook, so clean that copy before it goes.

Before the files leave the office

1. Keep the working files, and make a copy of each file for the client or contractor.
2. In the specification copy, accept or reject every tracked change, turn Track Changes off, and delete every comment, resolved ones included. Delete guidance that was hidden rather than meant for the reader.
3. Search for the last project's name, client, address and reference, and read the headers, footers and text boxes.
4. For a fee or estimate the client only reads, make a separate workbook holding the summary as values, unhide all, and check the totals.
5. In any workbook you send, break the links to the office's rate book and check Name Manager.
6. Go to File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties. Set Author the way the firm sends documents, correct or clear Title, Subject, Company and Comments, and delete the custom properties that belong to another project. The template name cannot be edited there; Document Inspector's Document Properties and Personal Information removes it.
7. On Windows, Document Inspector (File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document) finds and removes several of these in one pass, though its page lists links to other workbooks among what it finds but can't remove; Microsoft recommends using it on a copy, "because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes." On a Mac, see Document Inspector on a Mac.
8. If you send a PDF, export it with markup and document properties left out.

How to check the copy yourself

1. Open the copy and look at File › Info: Author and Last Modified By, then Show All Properties, including the Template; then the Custom tab of Advanced Properties.
2. For a closer look, make another copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it:
   • docProps/core.xml holds the author and the last person to save it; docProps/app.xml holds Company and the template's file name; docProps/custom.xml the custom properties. In word/_rels/settings.xml.rels, an attachedTemplate relationship's Target is the template's full path, which can name a server, a project folder or a user.
   • In the specification, search every word/*.xml part, headers and footers included, for <w:ins , <w:del , w:moveFrom, any element ending in PrChange, w:tblGridChange, w:cellIns, w:cellDel and w:cellMerge, which mark tracked changes, and for w:vanish, which marks hidden text unless its w:val is 0, false or off; a <w:comment element in word/comments.xml means comments remain, and word/people.xml lists people who commented or made changes.
   • In a workbook, xl/workbook.xml lists every sheet, and a hidden one has state="hidden" or state="veryHidden"; in xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml and the other sheets, hidden="1" on a <row or <col marks a hidden row or column, and an <autoFilter a filter; a folder xl/externalLinks/ means a link to another workbook is still there, and xl/pivotCache/ a pivot cache.
3. Search every part for the last project's name and for the name of the rate book.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx in your browser; the file is not uploaded. It lists what it finds: the properties, with the custom properties, the company and the template name among them, the comments with their authors, the tracked changes with who made them, hidden text, hidden sheets, rows and columns, links to other files, defined names, pivot tables and their caches, and the other kinds it supports. For free, one file at a time, it removes the properties, removes the comments and accepts the tracked changes: an old client's name deleted with Track Changes on is gone, and text added is kept. ScrubDrop Pro can instead reject all tracked changes, or accept or reject them author by author.

ScrubDrop Pro also removes the structural kinds, such as hidden sheets, rows, columns and text, links to other files (the path of an attached template among them), defined names, and pivot tables with their caches, and cleans a set of files at once and gives them back as a ZIP. When it removes hidden sheets, rows or columns, defined names or links to other files, every formula on the sheets that stay, not only those that used them, is replaced by its last calculated value, so the figures look the same but no longer calculate; that suits a fee proposal the client only reads. For a priced schedule that must keep calculating, make the changes in Excel (see grant and tender files) and leave those kinds unticked. When you choose to remove hidden text, a document that hides text through a style is not guessed at: it is refused with a message saying so. A sheet that has hidden rows or columns and also a filter with criteria or an Excel table is refused, because the filter's criteria or the table can keep what is in them. Clearing the filter shows those rows again rather than removing them, so delete the rows the reader should not see in Excel first. White or tiny text and cells outside the print area are listed but not removed, in either version. Removing the properties turns fields that show a property, such as a project number in a header, into plain text, and refuses, with a message, one it cannot take apart; read the headers after cleaning. ScrubDrop does not know which client a name belongs to: searching for the last project's names is still your step. It reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it. It does not read PDFs or drawing files.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft pages linked on this page were checked on 25 October 2026. ScrubDrop is not affiliated with Microsoft.