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Attaching Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in Outlook and Gmail: what the recipient gets

Last updated: 19 October 2026

What an attachment carries

When you attach a file from your computer, the recipient gets a copy of that file. Microsoft's page Add pictures or attach files to emails in Outlook puts it simply: "If you select a file on your local computer or group document library, a copy of the file is attached to the email." Everything in the file goes with it: the author, company and other properties, comments, tracked changes, hidden sheets and slides, speaker notes and links to other files. What each of those is, and where it lives, is in hidden data types in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The file's name goes too, and the recipient sees it before opening anything.

Classic Outlook can add your name to the attachment

Microsoft's page Prevent inclusion of personal information when you send Office documents says: "When a file that was created in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint is attached to an email message, personal information — such as your name or email address — might be added to the properties of the attached file." It explains that this is "primarily used by the Track Changes feature", and gives the steps to stop it:

1. On the File tab, click Options.
2. Click Trust Center, then Trust Center Settings.
3. Click Attachment Handling.
4. Under Reply With Changes, clear Add properties to attachments to enable Reply with Changes.

The page notes that "Access to Trust Center Settings is available in classic Outlook only." It describes a setting that stops Outlook adding to a file; it does not describe Outlook removing what the file already holds. We found no comparable setting described for the new Outlook or for Gmail.

The message around the file

An email has headers that travel with it. Microsoft's page View internet message headers in Outlook shows how to see them (in classic Outlook, open the message and click File › Properties; they appear in the Internet headers box) and gives an example with the sender's name and address, the recipients, the subject, the date, the servers the message passed through, and the program that sent it. In Gmail, Google's page Trace an email with its full header says to open the message, click More next to Reply and choose Show original.

The headers say who sent the message, to whom and when. They are not part of the attached file, and cleaning the file does not change them.

Attaching a copy or sharing a link

• Outlook and OneDrive or SharePoint. Microsoft's attachment page says that for a file in OneDrive or SharePoint you can send a link or a copy, and that you "can also set permissions on any file sent from OneDrive that allow message recipients to view and edit them or share them with others". It also notes that if you attach a copy, "any changes your recipient makes won't be synchronized with the version of the file in OneDrive".
• Gmail and Google Drive. Google's page Send Google Drive attachments in Gmail offers a Drive link or an attachment. When you share the file with "Anyone with the link", the same page says that if the message "is forwarded or new people are added to the conversation, they'll have the same permissions as the people you originally sent the message to"; sharing only with the message's recipients is a separate, narrower option. Google's page Send attachments with your Gmail message adds that when attachments are over the limit, Gmail "automatically removes the attachment" and "adds it as a Google Drive link in the email".

A link gives access to the file in the cloud according to its sharing settings. Sharing does not by itself remove anything from the file; what a recipient can view, edit or download depends on the permission you give, and later edits can reach them through the same link. Clean the file before you upload or share it, and choose the narrowest permission that does the job.

Before you attach

1. Make a copy of the file to send, and clean the copy: properties, comments, tracked changes, and anything hidden the recipient should not see. The pre-send checklist goes through each.
2. If the recipient only needs to read it, consider a PDF made from the cleaned copy; see sending a .docx or a PDF.
3. Give the file a name that says only what the recipient should see.
4. In classic Outlook, clear the Reply with Changes setting above if you do not use it.
5. If you share a link instead, check the permission and who else the message may be forwarded to.

Cleaning in the browser

ScrubDrop cleans .docx, .xlsx or .pptx files in your browser; the file is not uploaded. For free, it lists the supported kinds of hidden data it finds and removes properties, comments and tracked changes from one file at a time; ScrubDrop Pro removes the structural kinds too and takes several files at once. It does not change the message or its headers. The cleaned file keeps your file name with "-scrubbed" added, so rename it if the name says more than it should. It does not decide what the visible content should say.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft and Google pages linked on this page were checked on 19 October 2026.