Microsoft Word Track Changes Hide Reviewer Name

Date September 11, 2009 Author By kadmin Category General

Q: I want to send my document outside the company. I want to leave tracked changes in the document, but I don’t want anyone to see who made the tracked changes or when they were made. How do I do that?

Before Word 2003, you can’t. The author (or reviewer) information and the date information are permanently attached to the revision when the revision was tracked. You can’t change them, even in macro code.

In Word 2003, Tools > Options > Security. Tick the box “Remove personal information from file properties on save.” In spite of the name, this does more than just remove information in the file properties. If this box is ticked, Word removes the name of the author of a tracked change, and it removes the date and time that the change was made when you save your document. But it leaves the tracked change itself. All tracked changes and comments will be now attributed to an anonymous “Author”.