Board packs, minutes and treasurer's reports: what a nonprofit, association or PTA should clean before members see them

Q: Can members see what was deleted from the draft minutes?

Yes, if the deletions were made with Track Changes on and never accepted or rejected. Microsoft's page says No Markup only temporarily hides changes. Accept or reject every change in the copy you circulate, and delete the comments.

Q: Is hiding the donor sheet enough before sending the accounts?

No. A hidden sheet is still in the workbook, and anyone can unhide it. Copy the report into a new workbook as values, or publish a PDF of the report alone, and keep the full workbook with the treasurer.

Q: Will the PDF of the minutes show the secretary's name?

It can. A name typed on the page, such as in a signature line, goes into the PDF as it is. For the properties, Microsoft's page says, in its Word steps, that the PDF includes the document properties if Document properties is selected; the author is one of them. Make sure that box is cleared when you export, and check the PDF's properties afterwards.

Last updated: 25 October 2026

Short answer: draft minutes keep the remarks the committee agreed to cut, as tracked changes, until someone accepts or rejects them; the treasurer's workbook can keep donors' or members' names on a hidden sheet; the properties name the volunteer who wrote each file; a pack copied from the last meeting keeps that meeting's comments; and custom properties can say "draft" or "board only". Clean a copy of each file for members, export it to PDF with the properties and markup left out if that is what you publish, and check the copy before it goes out.

This page is for the secretary, chair or treasurer of a nonprofit, a charity, a residents' or tenants' association, a club or a parent–teacher association who sends board or committee papers, minutes and financial reports to members, posts them on a website, or hands them to someone outside the organisation. Applying for funding is a different job, covered in grant and tender files. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What the committee's files can carry

What board and committee files can hold besides what members are meant to read
What	Where it is	Why it matters when members get it
Remarks cut from the minutes	Tracked changes in the draft minutes, as deleted text	Words the meeting agreed not to record, with the name of whoever cut them and when
Donors' or members' names	A hidden sheet, hidden rows or a pivot table in the treasurer's workbook	Who gave how much, or who owes their subscription, behind a report that shows only totals
The volunteer's own name	Author and Last Modified By; the names on comments and tracked changes	A personal name or account name that the volunteer may not want published with the file
Last meeting's discussion	Comments, including resolved ones; speaker notes and hidden slides in a deck	Notes between officers ("don't mention the dispute yet") that came along when the pack was copied
Internal labels	Custom properties; Title, Subject, Keywords and Comments	"Draft", "board only" or a file reference that contradicts the version members receive

Minutes: the remarks that were cut

Draft minutes usually go round the committee before they are approved, and corrections are made with Track Changes on so everyone can see them. A deletion made that way is not gone: the deleted words stay in the file, with the reviewer's name and the date, until the change is accepted or rejected. 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." So a set of minutes that looks right in No Markup can still show a member everything that was said and later struck out.

When the minutes are approved, accept or reject every change in the copy you circulate, so that it reads as approved and holds nothing else, and turn Track Changes off. Keep the marked-up draft in the committee's own records if your rules ask for it. What accepting every change can still leave behind (the authors' names in other parts of the file, for one) is in tracked changes after Accept All.

The treasurer's report: names behind the totals

A financial report for members usually shows totals: income from donations, subscriptions received, grants spent. The workbook it comes from often has the list behind them, one row per donor or member, on a sheet that is hidden before the file is sent. Hiding does not remove it. Microsoft's Document Inspector page says: "If you distribute a copy of a workbook that has hidden rows, columns, or worksheets, other people might unhide them to view the data that they contain."

The same page names other things to check in such a workbook. A pivot table that sums donations by category keeps "cached data" of its own (see pivot caches keep deleted source data). A report that reads the treasurer's own workbook through a formula is an external link, and "The names of the worksheets containing that data are then saved with the workbooks but may not be visible". That link also keeps the path to the treasurer's workbook (see external links and full paths). And the page warns, of hidden sheets: "If the hidden worksheets in your workbook contain data, you might change the results of the calculations or formulas in your workbook by removing them."

The practical way round all three is to send members a separate workbook, or a PDF, that holds only the report: copy the report's range into a new blank workbook, paste it as values (Paste Special › Values), and check that the totals match the treasurer's figures. Rows hidden by hand inside that range can come along with it, so unhide all in the new workbook and delete any donor rows that came along. The full workbook stays with the treasurer and, if they ask for it, the examiner or auditor. More in hidden sheets, defined names and personal information in Excel.

The volunteer's own name

Committee papers are often written on the officers' own computers, so the name in the file is a person's, not the organisation's. 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 file that passed through three officers can carry all three: in Author, in Last Modified By, and on the comments and tracked changes. None of them is on the page.

If the organisation publishes papers under the role ("the Secretary") rather than the person, change the Author on 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 from the User name of whoever saves the file last, so either set that User name to the role before the final save, or remove the properties altogether. Microsoft's author-name page sets it under File › Options, in the User name box under Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office, with "Always use these values regardless of sign-in to Office" selected, and warns that this "changes the related settings for all Office apps"; set it back afterwards. Step by step for Word: removing the author name from a Word file.

Last meeting's comments and notes

The easiest way to make this month's pack is to copy last month's and change it. Whatever the officers wrote to each other in last month's file comes along. 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", so a comment marked resolved last month is still in this month's file. A slide deck for the annual meeting can keep the presenter's speaker notes and the slides that were hidden instead of deleted; see speaker notes and hidden slides. Delete them in the copy members get, and start the next pack from that clean copy rather than the working one.

Custom properties and other labels

Microsoft's page View or change the properties for an Office file says: "Custom properties are properties that you define for an Microsoft 365 document. You can assign a text, time, or numeric value to custom properties, and you can also assign them the values yes or no." They are on the Custom tab of File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties, and the Summary tab beside it holds Title, Subject, Author, Manager, Company, Category, Keywords and Comments. A file that started as a template from a shared drive or from an umbrella body can arrive with a status such as "Draft" or "Confidential – board only" in one of these, which reads oddly in a copy sent to every member. One by one, these are in Word's company, manager, template and custom properties.

Posting a PDF on the website

Many organisations publish approved minutes and the annual accounts as PDF. A PDF is not automatically clean. 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." Clean the Office file first. For Word minutes, choose Document and clear the Document properties box. For an Excel report or a PowerPoint deck, the same page has you select Options "to choose whether markup should be printed, and to select output options"; check there what goes in. Open the PDF's properties in your reader before it goes online. More in metadata when exporting to PDF and .docx or PDF.

Before the papers go to members

Keep the working files for the committee, and make a copy of each file for members.
In the minutes copy, accept or reject every tracked change and turn Track Changes off. Delete every comment, resolved ones included.
For the financial report, make a separate workbook holding only the report, pasted as values, and check its totals.
In a slide deck, read the speaker notes and delete the hidden slides you do not mean to publish.
Go to File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties. Set Author the way your organisation publishes, clear Title, Subject, Comments and Keywords if they do not match, and delete the custom properties.
On Windows, Document Inspector (File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document) finds and removes several of these in one pass; 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.
Search the copy for the names of donors, members or staff who should not be in it, and read the headers and footers.
If you publish a PDF, export it with markup and document properties left out.

How to check the copy yourself

Open the copy and look at File › Info: Author and Last Modified By, then Show All Properties; then the Custom tab of Advanced Properties.
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/custom.xml the custom properties; docProps/app.xml the company.
- In the minutes, search every word/*.xml part for <w:ins and <w:del , which mark tracked changes, and look for w:comment elements in word/comments.xml.
- In a workbook, xl/workbook.xml lists every sheet with its state; a folder xl/pivotCache/ or xl/externalLinks/ means a pivot cache or a link to another workbook is still there.
Search every part for two or three donor or member names you know were in the full list.

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 custom properties among them, the comments with their authors, the tracked changes with who made them, hidden sheets, rows and slides, pivot tables and their caches, links to other files, speaker notes 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: words struck out of the minutes with Track Changes on are gone, and words added are kept. If the meeting decided against an addition, reject that one change in Word before you clean the file. ScrubDrop Pro can reject all tracked changes, or accept or reject them author by author, but not one change on its own.

ScrubDrop Pro also removes the structural kinds, such as hidden sheets, rows and slides, pivot tables with their caches, links to other files, speaker notes and embedded objects, and cleans a whole pack at once and gives it back as a ZIP. Removing a pivot table takes out the pivot table's and its cache's parts and leaves on the sheet the values the table was showing; a workbook with a pivot chart, a slicer, a timeline or a GETPIVOTDATA formula that reads the pivot table is refused, with the reason. 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 report members only read, and for one they must recalculate, make the copy in Excel as described above. ScrubDrop does not change the Author to a role: it removes the properties, so the cleaned copy has no Author at all. If you want the role there, set your Office User name to the role and the Author in Office first, as above, then clean the file with document properties unticked (in either version), and check them in the result; or send the copy with no Author. A copy opened and saved again in Office after cleaning is no longer the one ScrubDrop re-checked. It reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it. It does not read PDFs.

Questions

Can members see what was deleted from the draft minutes?

Yes, if the deletions were made with Track Changes on and never accepted or rejected. Microsoft's page says No Markup only temporarily hides changes. Accept or reject every change in the copy you circulate, and delete the comments.

Is hiding the donor sheet enough before sending the accounts?

No. A hidden sheet is still in the workbook, and anyone can unhide it. Copy the report into a new workbook as values, or publish a PDF of the report alone, and keep the full workbook with the treasurer.

Will the PDF of the minutes show the secretary's name?

It can. A name typed on the page, such as in a signature line, goes into the PDF as it is. For the properties, Microsoft's page says, in its Word steps, that the PDF includes the document properties if Document properties is selected; the author is one of them. Make sure that box is cleared when you export, and check the PDF's properties afterwards.

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

Check the board papers before they go to members, in your browser. Free: one file at a time; every supported kind of hidden data it finds is listed, and properties, comments and tracked changes are removed. Check a file.