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Reusing a Word, Excel or PowerPoint template from a previous job: the logos, styles, fonts and old data it brings along

Last updated: 25 October 2026

Whether you may take a template or its content from a previous employer at all is a question for your contract and the two employers; this page is only about what the file carries. Most of what an inherited file keeps, such as the author, comments, tracked changes and links to the old company's network, is in Office files from a template vendor, a previous employer or a predecessor, with the cleaning steps; this page is about the parts that make up the template's design. Slide masters, unused layouts and the template name in a deck are covered in depth in what a PowerPoint template leaves in a deck.

Why the properties are not the whole story

A template is reused precisely for what it holds: Microsoft's page Create a template describes starting new files from one with File › New › Personal (or Custom). Its page on slide masters, Use a slide master to customize a presentation, says a master gives a presentation consistent "colors, fonts, headings, logos, and other styles". Those are exactly the things a company puts its name on, and they are not properties. Clearing File › Info, or running the properties part of Document Inspector, leaves them where they were.

Where the old company can still be

The names in the file come from the format itself. Microsoft's Open XML SDK reference, quoting ISO/IEC 29500-1, says a style's name element "specifies the primary name for the current style in the document", and that a theme has a name attribute that "specifies the name given to the theme". An embedded font is the font itself, not only its name: the same reference says an embedded font in a presentation carries "font information for each of the characters to be made available". Microsoft's page Customize or create new styles describes creating a style and giving it a name; a style created and named that way at the old company is stored under that name, and files made from the template start with it.

What Document Inspector covers here

Microsoft's Document Inspector page lists, for Word, the properties on the Summary, Statistics and Custom tabs and the "Template name"; a Custom XML Data inspector; and a Headers, Footers, and Watermarks inspector that removes "Information in document headers", "Information in document footers" and "Watermarks". That last one takes out the whole header and footer, not only the old logo, so in a template you mean to keep using it is usually better to replace the logo by hand. Excel has a Headers and Footers inspector and a Hidden Worksheets inspector; the page warns that removing hidden worksheets that contain data might "change the results of the calculations or formulas in your workbook".

For PowerPoint, the page's list has no inspector for slide masters or layouts, and none of the three apps' lists mentions style names, theme names or embedded fonts. Those you check yourself.

Turning it into your own template

1. Open the template itself. Microsoft's Create a template page says that to update a template you "open the file, make the changes you want, and then save the template", with File › Open and the template's folder. Cleaning one file made from it leaves the template as it was; the general cleaning steps are in Office files from a previous employer, so this list keeps to the design.
2. Headers, footers and watermarks. Replace or delete the logo, the address and any legal line in every header and footer, the first-page and odd/even ones included, and remove an old watermark.
3. Slide masters and layouts. In View › Slide Master, replace the logo and footer text on the master and on each layout. Deleting layouts you do not need is covered in what a PowerPoint template leaves in a deck.
4. Style and theme names. Rename or delete styles named after the old company, and check the theme's name. Deleting a style changes the text that uses it, so rename it if the formatting is what you want.
5. Embedded fonts. Microsoft's page Benefits of embedding custom fonts says how to remove an embedded font: turn off the Embed setting in File › Options and save; after you close and reopen the file, another font is substituted. The font's name stays where the theme fonts and styles refer to it, so change those too and search for the name (below).
6. Old data in an Excel template. Unhide every sheet, including very hidden ones (hidden sheets, names and personal information). The point for a template is the old data in the lookup tables and sample rows you keep: clear it, and delete names you do not need in Name Manager (hidden names do not appear there; see the linked guide).
7. Custom XML and properties. On Windows, run Document Inspector on the template with Custom XML Data and Document Properties and Personal Information selected, then set your own company if you want one, and after saving check that it is still there. A new file made from the template takes its author from your User name setting, as Microsoft's page Change the author name describes. In PowerPoint, Microsoft's Document Inspector page says that PowerPoint keeps removing personal information on save after the inspector has removed it, unless you select Change setting in the Personal Information Removal Enabled notification. If content controls in a Word template were bound to the old system, Microsoft's page says the inspector converts the last value of data bound fields to text, and that value may be the old company's data: read and replace it.
8. Make a new file and check it. Create a new file from the template with File › New and check that file as below. That is what you will send to people.

How to check a file made from it

1. Make a copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it.
2. Search every part for the old company's name, its short name and its domain, including styles.xml, word/fontTable.xml, the theme folder, the headers and footers, and the masters and layouts. A text search does not see words drawn in a picture, so also:
3. open each picture in word/media, xl/media or ppt/media, which is where a logo lives;
4. look for a word/fonts or ppt/fonts folder, a customXml folder, and attachedTemplate in word/_rels/settings.xml.rels;
5. open docProps/app.xml for Company and Template.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files in your browser; the file is not uploaded. Use it on a file you made from the template, to see what that file still carries. For free, it lists each supported kind of hidden data it finds, such as custom XML, hidden sheets and defined names, with counts and short samples. The free version, one file at a time, removes the document properties (the author, the company, the template name and every custom property), the comments, and accepts the tracked changes.

ScrubDrop Pro adds removing custom XML, hidden sheets, rows, slides and shapes (on masters and layouts too), defined names, and links to other files, the path of an attached Word template included. Removing hidden sheets, rows or columns, defined names or links with Pro turns every formula on the sheets that stay into its last calculated value, as the check page says, so a workbook whose formulas must keep working is better cleaned in Excel.

ScrubDrop does not remove or list logos, header and footer content, watermarks, style names or the theme's name: they are visible content or formatting, and only you can tell whether they belong. It keeps embedded fonts, because they draw the text, and it does not delete layouts that no slide uses. Pro removes the metadata inside JPEG, PNG and GIF pictures, but the picture itself, the old logo included, stays. The result is read again by software separate from the one that wrote it, and a file that does not pass is not offered.

Questions

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