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Exporting Word, Excel or PowerPoint to PDF: which metadata goes with it

Last updated: 16 October 2026

What the export options carry over

Microsoft's page Save or convert to PDF or XPS in Office desktop apps describes the Options button in the save dialog. For Word it names the settings that decide what leaves with the pages:

• Document properties. "If you want to include document properties in the PDF, make sure Document properties is selected." Leave it clear if the author, title or company should stay behind.
• Tracked changes. "To include tracked changes in the PDF, under Publish what, select Document showing markup." Check which one is selected before you save.
• Bookmarks and structure tags. Microsoft describes structure tags as making the document "easier for screen-reading software to read". Keep them; just remember that whatever you wrote as alternative text for a picture is meant to be read out.

For PowerPoint, Microsoft's page Save PowerPoint presentations as PDF files says the options let you "include frame slides, hidden slides, comments, ink" and "non-printing information such as Document properties or Document structure tags", and that you can publish handouts or Outline view instead of the slides. Notes go into the PDF if you publish notes pages. On the Mac, the same page says, "saving notes, saving slides as handouts, including hidden slides in the PDF" are not available.

For Excel, the choice is what to publish. For the Print dialog of Excel for Mac, Microsoft's page Print a sheet or workbook lists "Selection, Active Sheets, or Entire Workbook", and says "The default is to print all active sheets." Check the same choice in whichever export or print dialog you use. We found no Microsoft page that says whether hidden sheets are included when you publish the entire workbook, so count the pages in the PDF against the sheets you meant to send.

Where a PDF keeps its metadata

The PDF format has two places for it. ISO 32000-1, the PDF standard (Adobe's public copy, section 14.3), says metadata "may be stored" either in a document information dictionary or in a metadata stream:

• The document information dictionary — the original place, with entries such as Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer and the creation and modification dates. Creator is the program that made the original document; Producer is the one that converted it to PDF.
• A metadata stream in XMP, the format Adobe describes as "a file labeling technology" and which became ISO 16684-1 (Adobe's XMP documentation). The standard calls metadata streams "now the preferred method", and says metadata can also be attached to individual components, such as an image.

We found no Microsoft page that says which of the two Office fills, or whether it differs between versions. Check both, as below. The standard defines Creator and Producer as the names of programs, but we found no source that says whether Office fills them when Document properties is cleared, so look at their values in the PDF you exported.

What stays behind

A PDF is a record of the pages, so these parts of an Office file, which are not printed, are not what the export is for:

• Excel's pivot caches, defined names and external link paths — see finding hidden data in Excel for what these are;
• Word's editing-session identifiers (rsid), document variables and custom XML;
• PowerPoint's off-slide objects, and notes and hidden slides unless you publish them.

The Microsoft pages cited here do not give a full account of what the export leaves out, though, so do not take the absence of something from the printed pages as proof that it is absent from the PDF. Check the PDF, as below.

This is why people export to PDF. It is also why a PDF is not a fix when the recipient needs the editable file: then the hidden data has to come out of the Office file itself.

What can remain in the PDF

• Everything on the page. A name in a header, a figure in a cell, text you placed under a shape — if it is on the printed page, it is in the PDF, and covered text can often be selected or copied.
• Links. Hyperlinks can survive the export: Microsoft says PDFs from PowerPoint for the web "preserve hyperlinks", and says PowerPoint for macOS does not. A link that is kept to a file on a share shows that path to anyone who points at it.
• Pictures. The export can change how a picture is stored, and we found no Microsoft statement on whether an inserted photo keeps its camera or location details inside the PDF. Before you export, remove those details with a tool that handles that picture's format. ScrubDrop Pro removes them from the picture formats it supports and says which pictures it did not check.
• The file name. The PDF is named after the document unless you change it.

An order that works

1. Clean the Office file: properties, comments, tracked changes, and the rest of what our pre-send checklist covers.
2. Export with Document properties cleared, and with only what you mean to publish (no markup, no hidden slides, slides rather than notes pages).
3. Open the PDF and check its properties and pages, as below.

ScrubDrop handles step 1 for .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files in your browser; the file is not uploaded. For free, it lists every kind of hidden data it finds and removes properties and comments and accepts tracked changes, one file at a time; removing the structural kinds and picture details is part of ScrubDrop Pro. White or tiny text and cells outside the print area are listed for you to review, in both versions, not removed. It refuses PDFs: steps 2 and 3 are yours.

How to check the PDF

1. Open it in your PDF reader and look at File › Properties (or Document Properties): the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords fields, and the application that created it.
2. In a reader that shows it, look at the additional or XMP metadata too, since that is the second place.
3. For a quick look without special tools, open a copy of the PDF in a text editor and search for /Author and xmpmeta. Parts of a PDF are often compressed, so finding nothing this way does not prove there is nothing.
4. Page through the whole PDF: comments, notes pages or a hidden slide in the output mean an export option was on.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft and Adobe pages linked on this page were checked on 16 October 2026.