Grant applications, tenders and proposals in Word, Excel or PowerPoint: what to clean before you submit

Q: Will a funder or buyer see the name of the last organisation I applied to?

Only if it is still in the file. It is most likely in tracked changes, as deleted text, or in a comment. Microsoft's page says No Markup only temporarily hides changes, so accept or reject every change, delete the comments, and search the copy for the old name.

Q: Can the evaluator see a hidden sheet in my budget workbook?

Yes. A hidden sheet is still in the file, and anyone with the workbook can unhide it. If the breakdown is not meant for them, replace the visible figures that read it with their values in a copy, delete the sheet, and check the totals.

Q: Does submitting a PDF solve all of this?

Not by itself. Microsoft's page says the PDF includes the document properties if Document properties is selected, and tracked changes if you publish the document showing markup. Clean the Office file, export with both left out, and check the PDF's properties.

Last updated: 25 October 2026

Short answer: an application or bid is usually built from the last one, so the file can still hold the last funder's or buyer's name in tracked changes and comments, the cost breakdown on a hidden sheet of the budget workbook, internal labels in custom properties, and the name of the template it came from. Read the call's instructions first: if they ask for PDF, clean the Office file and export it with the document properties left out; if they ask for an Office file, clean a copy. Keep what the funder's or buyer's own form needs, and check the copy you submit.

This page is for the applicant or bidder: a grant application, a tender response or a proposal you submit to a funder or buyer. For files you send to your own clients, see before you send an Office file to a client. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What to take out

What an application or bid file can carry from earlier work
What	Where it is	Why it matters in a submission
The last funder's or buyer's name	Tracked changes (as deleted text), comments, the Title property, headers and footers	It shows the text was written for someone else, and which rival funder or buyer that was
Cost breakdown	A hidden sheet, hidden rows or columns in the budget workbook	Day rates, margins or supplier prices that the visible budget only totals
Internal labels	Custom properties; Title, Subject, Keywords and Comments on the Summary tab	A bid code name, an internal project number, a pipeline status or a client code
Where the file came from	Template name, attached template path, Company and Author	A bid-writing consultancy's template, a partner's company, or a colleague's user name
Review notes	Comments, including resolved ones	"Can we justify this rate?" and similar notes, with the reviewer's name

The last application's name

A reused proposal is where an earlier funder's or buyer's name stays. If Track Changes was on when you replaced it, the old name is 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." Comments stay until you delete them, resolved ones included. What accepting every change leaves behind is in tracked changes after Accept All.

Search the text for the earlier names too: search for the last funder's or buyer's name and its abbreviation. Find may not reach every part of the document, so also read the headers, footers and text boxes yourself.

The budget workbook: hidden sheets and cells

Hiding a sheet does not take its data out of the file. Anyone who receives the workbook can unhide it. Microsoft's Document Inspector page lists hidden worksheets, hidden rows and hidden columns that contain data among what it finds in Excel, and warns: "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."

That warning is the practical problem with a budget. The visible totals often read the hidden breakdown. Decide first whether the breakdown is meant for the funder or buyer at all:

If they asked for it, show the sheet and submit it.
If they did not, make a copy, and in the copy replace the visible figures that read the hidden sheet with their values (Copy, then Paste Special › Values) before you delete the sheet. Those cells then stop calculating; the other formulas keep working. Check that the totals did not change.
If the formulas they require are the ones that read the breakdown, they cannot keep calculating without it: keep the breakdown, or ask the funder or buyer what they expect.

Deleting the sheet does not take every copy of its data with it. A pivot table built from the breakdown keeps the rows in its cache (see pivot caches keep deleted source data), and names that pointed at the sheet can stay in Formulas › Name Manager, where a name such as SupplierRate can itself say what the sheet held. Check both after you delete it.

Sheets hidden with code ("very hidden") do not appear in the Unhide list; see hidden sheets, defined names and personal information in Excel. Values in filtered or grouped rows are covered in personal data inside an Excel sheet.

Custom properties and other internal 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." They are on the Custom tab of Advanced Properties (File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties), and, the page says, they can hold "a text, time, or numeric value", or yes or no. A bid team, a document management system or a template can fill them with a code name, a project number or a status, and none of it shows on the page. The same dialog's Summary tab holds Title, Subject, Author, Manager, Company, Category, Keywords and Comments. One by one, these are in Word's company, manager, template and custom properties.

Where the file came from: the template

Word keeps the name of the template a document was based on, and Document Inspector lists "Template name" among what it removes from Word documents. A proposal started from a consultancy's template, a partner's earlier bid or a former employer's document can keep that name, along with its Company and Author. What such files carry, and how to clean one before you reuse it, is in files from a template vendor or previous employer; for a slide deck built on a template, see slide masters, layouts and the template name.

What to leave in

The funder's or buyer's own form. If they supplied the Word form or the budget workbook, keep its structure: protected cells, drop-down lists, form fields and the formulas they built in. Fill it in; do not rebuild it.
Formulas they ask to see. If the instructions say the budget must calculate, submit working formulas. Leave out a sheet they did not ask for only if those formulas do not read it, as above.
What the instructions require. Declarations, signatures, named contacts and attachments they list belong in the submission.
Tracked changes only if asked. In a clarification round, a buyer may ask for a marked-up version; send that as a separate file and only to them.

PDF or Office: what the call asks for

Read the instructions for the format of each document. Calls often ask for the narrative as PDF and the budget in their own spreadsheet, and some name the file names to use. Follow them; a cleaned file in the wrong format can still be rejected.

If they ask for PDF: the PDF is what they receive, but it is not automatically clean. Microsoft's page Save or convert to PDF or XPS in Office desktop apps says: "If you want to include document properties in the PDF, make sure Document properties is selected", and "To include tracked changes in the PDF, under Publish what, select Document showing markup." Clean the Office file first, export with both left out, and open the PDF's properties in your reader. More in metadata when exporting to PDF.

If they ask for an Office file: everything in this page goes with it. Clean a copy, and keep the original for your own records.

Before you submit

Keep your working version, and clean a copy of each file for the submission.
Accept or reject every tracked change and turn Track Changes off. Delete every comment.
In the budget copy, decide about each hidden sheet, row and column as above.
Go to File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties. Clear or correct the Summary tab, and delete the custom properties you do not mean to send.
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." In a form the funder or buyer supplied, take care: the same page lists "Databinding link information for data bound fields (last value will be converted to text)" among the Word properties it removes, so check afterwards that the form still works. On a Mac, see Document Inspector on a Mac.
Search for the names of earlier funders, buyers and partners, and read the headers, footers and text boxes.
Name the files as the instructions ask, not with an internal draft name.
If a PDF is required, export it with the properties and markup left out.

How to check the copy yourself

Open the copy and look at File › Info, then Show All Properties: Author, Last Modified By, Company and the Template; then the Custom tab of Advanced Properties.
For a closer look, make another copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it:
- docProps/custom.xml holds the custom properties; docProps/app.xml holds Company and Template; docProps/core.xml the author and the last person to save it.
- In a workbook, xl/workbook.xml lists every sheet; a state="hidden" or state="veryHidden" on one means it is still there.
- In a Word file, search every word/*.xml part, headers, footers and notes included, for <w:ins , <w:del , w:moveFrom, w:moveTo and any element ending in PrChange, which mark tracked changes (with the bracket and the space, so that field codes and deleted text do not match); a w:comment element in word/comments.xml means comments remain.
Search every part for the earlier funder's or buyer's name and for your internal code names.

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 a count and the first few values (the custom properties, the company and the template name are counted with them), the comments with their authors, the tracked changes with who made them, hidden sheets by name, and the other kinds it supports. For free, one file at a time, it removes the properties, custom properties included, removes the comments and accepts the tracked changes.

ScrubDrop Pro also removes the structural kinds, such as hidden sheets, rows and columns, the path of an attached template, defined names and custom XML, and lets you choose which of them to remove. 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 totals look the same but no longer calculate. Done by hand in Excel as described above, only the cells you paste as values stop calculating. So if the funder's or buyer's form must keep working formulas, make those changes in Excel, and leave hidden content, defined names and links to other files unticked in ScrubDrop. Removing custom XML can also unbind the content controls of a Word form; leave it unticked for a form the funder or buyer supplied. Removing the properties, which the free version does too, turns fields that show a property, such as a title in the header, into plain text, so check a supplied form's fields after cleaning. ScrubDrop reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it, but it cannot know what a funder's form needs, so check the copy against their instructions. It does not read PDFs.

Questions

Will a funder or buyer see the name of the last organisation I applied to?

Only if it is still in the file. It is most likely in tracked changes, as deleted text, or in a comment. Microsoft's page says No Markup only temporarily hides changes, so accept or reject every change, delete the comments, and search the copy for the old name.

Can the evaluator see a hidden sheet in my budget workbook?

Yes. A hidden sheet is still in the file, and anyone with the workbook can unhide it. If the breakdown is not meant for them, replace the visible figures that read it with their values in a copy, delete the sheet, and check the totals.

Does submitting a PDF solve all of this?

Not by itself. Microsoft's page says the PDF includes the document properties if Document properties is selected, and tracked changes if you publish the document showing markup. Clean the Office file, export with both left out, and check the PDF's properties.

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

Check your application or bid before you submit it, 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.