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Your CV and cover letter as a Word file: what the employer can see inside it, and how to clean it first

Last updated: 25 October 2026

This page is for the person applying. If you work in HR or recruiting and handle other people's CVs, see hidden data in CVs, scorecards and offer letters. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What a CV file can carry besides the text

Where the names come from

Microsoft's page Change the author name for documents, presentations, or workbooks says Word sets the Author of each new document from the User name in Word's options, and that the same setting provides the name shown on comments and tracked changes. For a CV, that means a name set up on a shared, borrowed or work computer can be the author, and can label every change and comment you made there. Because the author is set when the document is created, a CV first written on a work computer can still carry the User name Office had on that computer. Where to see and change it is in removing your name as author in Word.

Microsoft's Document Inspector page lists, for Word, "information that is automatically maintained by Microsoft 365 programs, such as the name of the person who most recently saved a document". That name is kept in the properties separately from the author, so a CV someone else saved for you can carry their name there.

The other properties, Company, Manager, Title and the rest, are on the Summary tab of the properties dialog, according to View or change the properties for an Office file. They can come with the file you started from: a CV built on a previous employer's document, or on a friend's, can keep its company and title. The template name is kept among the properties too (Microsoft's Open XML SDK calls the element the Name of Document Template), and Document Inspector lists "Template name" among what it removes from Word documents. For what a template or someone else's file can leave in a new one, see files from a template vendor or previous employer; for the properties one by one, Word's company, manager, template and custom properties.

Total editing time

A .docx keeps a total editing time with its properties (the Open XML SDK calls it the Total Edit Time Metadata Element, "Total time that a document has been edited. The default time unit is minutes."). We found no Microsoft page that explains how Word counts that time, so do not read much into the number either way. It is in the file, though, and anyone who opens the file's properties or its parts can read it. It goes when the properties are removed.

The last application's name, in tracked changes and elsewhere

A cover letter reused for the next application is where an earlier company's name is most likely to stay. If Track Changes was on when you replaced it, the old name is still in the file as deleted text, with your user name on the change. 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." What accepting all of them leaves behind is covered in tracked changes after Accept All.

The earlier name can also sit in places that are not tracked changes:

• a comment you left yourself, such as a reminder to change the company name;
• the Title property, if you once typed the earlier application into it;
• the file name itself, such as a CV saved as "CV for (company)";
• a header, footer or text box you did not reread.

Before you send it

1. Keep your master CV, and clean a copy for each application.
2. On the Review tab, under Tracking, choose Accept All Changes or Reject All Changes, or go through them one at a time, then turn Track Changes off. Read the result: accepting keeps the new text, rejecting brings the old text back.
3. Delete every comment, including resolved ones (see comments, ink and annotations).
4. Go to File › Info. For the Author, Microsoft's properties page says you right-click it and choose Remove or Edit. Open Properties › Advanced Properties and clear or correct the Title, Company, Manager and the other fields on the Summary tab.
5. To have your own name on the next file you create, change the User name in File › Options and select Always use these values regardless of sign-in to Office, as the author-name page describes. That does not change files you already have.
6. On Windows, Document Inspector (File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document) can remove the properties and comments in one pass; Microsoft recommends using it on a copy. For a Mac, see Document Inspector on a Mac.
7. Search the text for the names of earlier employers and companies you applied to, and read the headers, footers and text boxes.
8. Give the file a neutral name, such as your name and "CV".

Does sending a PDF make all this go away?

Not by itself. According to Microsoft's page Save or convert to PDF or XPS in Office desktop apps, the export can include the document properties and, if you publish the document showing markup, the tracked changes. That page does not say how comments are handled, so check the PDF. For a CV: clean the .docx first, export the PDF with the properties and markup left out, and open the PDF's properties in your reader. The comparison is in sending a Word file as .docx or as PDF, and where a PDF keeps its metadata in metadata when exporting to PDF. If the employer asks for a Word file, send the cleaned .docx.

How to check the copy yourself

1. Open the copy in Word and show all markup. Nothing should be marked, and there should be no comments. The Accept or reject page suggests a final check with Document Inspector.
2. Look at File › Info again: Author, Last Modified By, Company and Title.
3. For a closer look, make another copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it. In docProps/core.xml, the usual name, read dc:creator, cp:lastModifiedBy and dc:title; in docProps/app.xml, Company, Template and TotalTime. Then search every part under word/, headers and footnotes included, for author, which tracked changes and comments carry (Word can also list commenters in word/people.xml); a word/comments.xml means the file still holds comments.
4. Search every part for your old employer's name and for the name of the account you use on that computer.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads the CV in your browser; the file is not uploaded. It lists what it finds: the properties, with a count and the first few values, such as the author and the last person to save it (the company and the template name are counted with them); the comments, with their authors; and the tracked changes, with who made them and a short sample of the text. For free, one file at a time, it removes the properties, removes the comments, and accepts the tracked changes, so text deleted with Track Changes on goes and inserted text stays. The editing time is not listed as an item of its own; it goes with the properties. Rejecting changes, or deciding by author, is part of ScrubDrop Pro, as are the less visible kinds, such as hidden text, the path of an attached template and custom XML. White or tiny text is listed for you to review in both versions, not removed. ScrubDrop reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it. It does not change Word's User name, and 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.