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Real estate agents: what a listing, contract or price analysis in Word or Excel can carry to buyers, sellers and other agents

Last updated: 25 October 2026

This page is for a real estate agent, broker or their assistant who sends listing sheets, property information, offer letters, draft contracts or a price analysis to buyers, sellers, their lawyers or another agency. It is about what a Word or Excel file carries beyond what you meant to send; what you must tell a buyer or seller is set by the law and rules where you work, and cleaning a file does not change it. Files for your own lawyer or accountant are covered in sending files to a lawyer or accountant. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What a property file can carry

The last deal's names and price

An offer letter, a draft contract or a listing sheet is usually made by copying the one from the last similar property and changing the details. If Track Changes was on while the old seller's name, the old address and the old price were replaced, they 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." A draft that looks right on screen can show the buyer's agent what the last house sold for and to whom.

A contract that the other side's lawyer will mark up is a different case: there, tracked changes are how the parties work. Even then, start the version you send from a copy in which your own earlier changes have been accepted or rejected and your internal comments deleted, so the only tracked changes in it are the ones you mean the other side to see. Then search the copy for the previous client's name, the previous address and the previous price, and read the headers, footers and tables yourself.

The price analysis: what sits behind the figure

A price analysis or market appraisal for a seller usually shows a few comparable sales and a suggested range. The workbook behind it often holds more: every sale the agent looked at, the adjustments, the ones left out, and sometimes a figure the seller said they would accept. Hiding that sheet or those columns does not remove them. 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." Microsoft's Document Inspector page lists, among what can hold hidden data, "active Autofilters or table filters that might cause cached or hidden data to be saved with the workbook", so a list filtered down to three comparables still holds the others.

Sending the seller's own analysis to a buyer, or a buyer's to another agent, is the case to watch. Make the copy that goes out from a new blank workbook: copy only the rows and columns meant for that reader, paste them as values (Paste Special › Values), and check the figures. Rows or columns hidden by hand inside the range you copy can come along with it, so unhide all in the new workbook and delete what should not be there. More in personal data inside an Excel sheet and hidden sheets, defined names and personal information in Excel.

Negotiation notes in comments

Agents and assistants often leave each other notes in the file itself: what the seller said on the phone, how far a buyer might go, what to leave out of the next draft. A comment is part of the file until it is 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", so marking a note resolved does not take it out. A workbook keeps comments and notes too, each with its author; see Excel comments, notes and names. Delete them in the copy that goes to a buyer, a seller or another agency, and keep the working file in the office.

Whose name is on the file

Office writes the User name of whoever creates a file into its Author property, and the same name onto comments and tracked changes, as Microsoft's page Change the author name explains, and the Document Inspector page says Office maintains "the name of the person who most recently saved a document". So a listing prepared by an assistant and saved by the agent can carry both names, and a contract copied from a colleague's deal can still name the colleague as Author. If the agency sends files under its own name, see removing the author name from a Word file; a file reference or status in the custom properties is covered in Word's company, manager, template and custom properties.

Does sending a PDF fix it?

Partly. Exported with the right options, a PDF leaves out the tracked changes and most of the properties (check the PDF for comments too); but every name and price visible on the page, in a table, a header or a footer goes into the PDF 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 afterwards. Which to send, and what each carries, is in .docx or PDF. A contract the other side must edit stays a Word file, so clean that copy before it goes.

Before a file goes to a buyer, seller or another agent

1. Keep the working file, and make a copy for this reader.
2. In a Word copy, accept or reject every tracked change and turn Track Changes off, unless the other side needs to see your proposed changes; then send only those. Delete every comment, resolved ones included.
3. Search for the previous client's name, the previous address and the previous price, and read the headers, footers and tables.
4. For a price analysis, make a new workbook holding only the rows and columns for this reader, as values; unhide all and check.
5. Go to File › Info › Properties › Advanced Properties. Set Author the way the agency sends files, clear Title, Subject, Keywords and Comments if they do not match, and delete the custom properties.
6. 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.
7. 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; 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/custom.xml the custom properties.
   • In a Word file, 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; 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; parts whose names start with xl/comments or xl/threadedComments hold notes and comments, and xl/persons/person.xml the names of those who wrote threaded comments.
3. Search every part for the previous client's name and for a price you know was in the working file.

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 among them, the comments and notes with their authors, the tracked changes with who made them, hidden sheets, rows and columns, 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: the last seller'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; a contract whose changes the other side must still see is not one to clean this way.

ScrubDrop Pro also removes the structural kinds, such as hidden sheets, rows and columns, links to other files and defined names, and cleans several 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. 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. ScrubDrop does not decide which comparables a buyer may see: making the copy with only those rows is still your step. It reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it. It does not read PDFs.

Questions

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