Remove PowerPoint metadata.

What presentations reveal

A .pptx file is a ZIP archive of XML documents and embedded media, just like Word and Excel files. Presentations are some of the most-shared business documents — sent to clients, uploaded to SlideShare, attached to proposals — and they carry the same metadata categories that can quietly expose your organization:

• Author and last-modified-by: usually the creator's name and the name of whoever last touched the deck.
• Company name: pulled from the Office installation, often revealing the agency or contractor who actually built a deck presented under someone else's brand.
• Slide notes and comments: presenter notes and review comments that were never meant for the audience.
• Revision and editing time: how many times the deck was revised and how long was spent on it.
• Embedded image EXIF: photos and screenshots pasted into slides retain their own metadata, including GPS for phone photos.

What our tool removes

• Core properties (creator, lastModifiedBy, created, modified, revision, title, subject, keywords)
• App properties (Company, Manager, Template, TotalTime, Application)
• Custom properties (custom.xml — often CRM/DMS metadata)
• Comment author files and threaded comments
• EXIF from JPEGs embedded in ppt/media/

What our tool does not touch

• Slide content, text, and layout
• Charts, SmartArt, and embedded objects
• Transitions, animations, and timings
• Slide masters and themes

Presenter notes that are content (not comments) are preserved. If your notes contain sensitive information you don't want to share, delete them in PowerPoint before running this tool — or use the "Remove All Presenter Notes" option in PowerPoint's own Inspect Presentation feature first.

How to use

1. Drop your .pptx file above
2. Review the field list in the inspector
3. Pick a preset (Privacy or Maximum Privacy)
4. Download the cleaned presentation
5. Optionally download the audit report

Inside a .pptx file

A PowerPoint presentation is a ZIP archive of XML parts, sharing the same Office Open XML foundation as Word and Excel. Its metadata lives in the familiar docProps/ folder, while each slide, its notes, and its media are stored separately:

pitch-deck.pptx
├── docProps/
│   ├── core.xml      ← author, lastModifiedBy, dates
│   ├── app.xml       ← company, template, total edit time
│   └── custom.xml    ← injected enterprise properties
└── ppt/
    ├── presentation.xml
    ├── slides/           ← slide content
    ├── notesSlides/      ← presenter notes
    ├── comments/         ← reviewer comments
    └── media/            ← logos, photos, screenshots (EXIF)

The "agency built it" giveaway

Presentations are the document type most likely to be presented under one brand but built by another party — an agency, a freelancer, a consultant. The Company field in app.xml is populated from whoever's copy of Office created or last saved the file. A deck delivered to a client under the client's logo can quietly carry the agency's company name in its metadata. The lastModifiedBy field in core.xml similarly records the name on the account that last saved the file. The cleaner empties both.

Notes, comments, and embedded images

Three categories deserve attention in presentations specifically. Presenter notes are content (stored in notesSlides/) and are preserved by the cleaner — if they contain sensitive talking points, delete them in PowerPoint first. Comments (in ppt/comments/) are metadata and are removed, along with the author names attached to them. Embedded images — every logo, chart export, and pasted screenshot in ppt/media/ — can carry their own EXIF, including GPS on phone photos; the cleaner strips EXIF from these.

The verification math

As with every format, the tool fingerprints the file with SHA-256 before and after cleaning. This hash compresses a file of any size into a fixed 256-bit value (64 hex characters). A single changed bit produces a completely different hash — the avalanche effect — so a reader can confirm both that the file changed and exactly which cleaned file the audit report describes. The odds of two files sharing a hash are about 1 / 2¹²⁸, effectively zero.

A worked example: before and after

A presentation stores its identity in docProps/core.xml and docProps/app.xml. Here is a typical pitch deck's metadata before and after the Privacy preset — note how the "before" reveals who really built a deck that was presented under a client's brand.

<!-- docProps/core.xml -->
<dc:creator>design.team</dc:creator>
<cp:lastModifiedBy>j.alvarez</cp:lastModifiedBy>
<dcterms:created>2025-09-01T08:00Z</dcterms:created>

<!-- docProps/app.xml -->
<Company>BrightEdge Agency</Company>
<TotalTime>1840</TotalTime>
<Template>BrightEdge-master.potx</Template>

<!-- docProps/core.xml -->
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<cp:lastModifiedBy></cp:lastModifiedBy>
<dcterms:created>2000-01-01T00:00Z</dcterms:created>

<!-- docProps/app.xml -->
<Company></Company>
<TotalTime>0</TotalTime>

The "before" deck announces that an outside agency built it: the Company field, the Template pointing to the agency's master file, and the creator account all name BrightEdge, even though the slides carry the client's logo. The TotalTime of 1,840 minutes reveals roughly 30 hours went into the deck. After cleaning, all of it is gone.

Complete PowerPoint metadata field reference

How this has actually burned people

A note on presenter notes

Presenter notes deserve special attention because they are the one place in a presentation where people write things they would never put on a slide. Technically, notes are content (stored in ppt/notesSlides/), not metadata, so the cleaner preserves them by design — deleting your speaker notes without asking would be the wrong default. But that means you are responsible for them. Before sharing a deck, either delete sensitive notes manually, or use PowerPoint's File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Presentation, which offers a "Remove All Presentation Notes" option. Run that first, then run this cleaner to strip the metadata.

How to verify the file is clean

• In PowerPoint: File → Info → Properties; confirm Author, Company, and Last Modified By are blank.
• By unzipping: rename a copy to .zip and inspect docProps/core.xml and docProps/app.xml.
• Confirm docProps/custom.xml and the ppt/comments/ folder are gone from the archive.
• The audit report records a SHA-256 hash of the cleaned presentation.

Frequently asked questions