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How to Remove Name from Word Comments

The author’s name is by default included for every comment made in a document when using Microsoft Word. The names used are the one’s defined in the User name field in Word Options > General > Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office or your Office account details if you’re signed in.

However, there are situations where you may not want your names to be shown alongside the comments, for instance when sharing the document publicly online.

In such situation you can make the comments anonymous in the same way we remove the Author, Last Modified and Last Saved By details for single documents, albeit there’s also a quicker way to remove the author details in bulk using Windows’ File Explorer.

Let’s see how to accomplish the former. The steps below are for Word 2019 however they also apply to older and newer versions of MS Office including Word 2016, 2021 and 365.

Steps

  1. Open the document with the comments.
  2. Go to the File menu and select the Info tab.
  3. In the Inspect Document section click on the Check for Issues > Inspect Document.
  4. This will launch the Document Inspector window with most of the options checked. Make sure the second option ‘Document Properties and Personal Information‘ is checked, then click the Inspect button.
  5. Word will analyze the document for a few seconds and display a list of issues found. Click the Remove All button next to the ‘Document Properties and Personal Information’ option then close the window.
  6. Save the document and reopen it. The comments will have the name Author instead of your names.

Note:

  • Take care not to click the Remove All button next to the ‘Comments, Revisions and Versions‘ option as this will delete all the comments. To avoid this possibility, you may uncheck this option before inspecting the document.
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Kelvin Kathia

Kelvin Kathia is a writer that's passionate about sharing solutions to everyday tech problems. He's the founder and editor of Journey Bytes, a tech blog and web design agency. Feel free to leave him comments or questions regarding this post, or by leaving him a message on the contact page. If you found his content helpful, a donation is much appreciated.