The Professional's Pre-Send Checklist for Documents
A practical checklist for checking documents before sending them to clients, opposing counsel, regulators, or anyone outside your organization.
Why you need a pre-send checklist
Pilots use pre-flight checklists before every flight. Surgeons use pre-operative checklists before every procedure. Both professions have decades of data showing that checklists catch errors that expertise alone does not.
Document sharing has no equivalent. Lawyers, consultants, compliance officers, and healthcare professionals send hundreds of documents per year to people outside their organizations — and there is no standard process for inspecting those documents before they leave.
The result is predictable: metadata leaks, accidental disclosure of revision history, GPS coordinates in photos, and redaction failures that make the news. Not because the senders were careless, but because they did not have a checklist.
This is that checklist.
The checklist
Print this. Pin it next to your monitor. Run through it before sending any document to someone outside your organization.
1. Author and identity fields
Check: Does the document's "Properties" or "Info" panel contain names, email addresses, or usernames you don't want to share?
Where to look:
- Word/Excel/PowerPoint: File > Info > Properties (right panel)
- PDF: File > Properties > Description
- Any file on macOS: Right-click > Get Info > More Info
Common problems:
- Author field shows a previous employee's name
- "Last modified by" shows your personal account name
- Company field shows a previous employer or the client the template was originally created for
Fix: Clear these fields manually or use a metadata removal tool.
2. Company name
Check: Does the document identify your organization — or worse, a different organization?
Where to look: Same as above — the "Company" field in Word/Excel/PowerPoint is in File > Info or in the file's XML (docProps/app.xml).
Common problems:
- Consulting firms adapting proposals from competitors' templates
- Documents created on a personal device where Office was installed with a previous employer's license
- Templates with hardcoded company names in document properties
Fix: Clear the Company field. If you use organizational templates, ensure the template itself has the correct company name — or no company name at all.
3. Tracked changes and revision history
Check: Does the document contain tracked insertions, deletions, or formatting changes — even if they appear "accepted"?
Where to look:
- Word: Review tab > check if "All Markup" shows any changes. Then run File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document
- Turn on "Show Markup" and check every revision type (insertions, deletions, formatting, comments)
Common problems:
- "Accept All Changes" was clicked but revision data persists in the XML
- Track Changes was turned off but previous revisions were never removed
- Revision history reveals negotiation positions, deleted terms, or pricing changes
Fix: Run Document Inspector and remove all revisions. For high-stakes documents (settlements, proposals, regulatory submissions), use a tool that verifies removal by re-parsing the file.
4. Comments
Check: Are there comment threads in the document — including resolved comments?
Where to look:
- Word: Review tab > check the Comments pane
- Excel: Review tab > check for comment indicators on cells
- PowerPoint: Check the Comments panel
Common problems:
- Resolved comments remain in the file's XML even though they are hidden in the interface
- Comments contain internal discussions, pricing strategy, or candid assessments not intended for the recipient
- Comments by multiple reviewers reveal the internal review chain
Fix: Delete all comments (not just resolve them). Run Document Inspector to catch resolved comments that persist in the XML.
5. Speaker notes and hidden slides (PowerPoint)
Check: Does the presentation contain speaker notes or hidden slides?
Where to look:
- PowerPoint: View > Notes Page to see all speaker notes
- Slide Sorter view: hidden slides appear with a "hidden" icon
Common problems:
- Speaker notes contain talking points, objection handling scripts, or reminders not intended for the audience
- Hidden slides contain internal-only content, pricing alternatives, or draft material
Fix: Delete speaker notes from all slides. Delete or unhide hidden slides. Or use a metadata tool that handles these automatically.
6. Embedded images and their metadata
Check: If the document contains photos or screenshots, do those images carry EXIF metadata?
Where to look: This is hard to check without extracting the images from the document. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint store embedded images in their internal ZIP structure (word/media/, xl/media/, ppt/media/). Each embedded image retains its original EXIF data.
Common problems:
- A photo embedded in a proposal contains GPS coordinates identifying a client's location
- A screenshot contains the author's desktop metadata (username in the window title bar, file paths in the address bar)
- Clinical photos contain device identifiers and location data
Fix: Strip EXIF data from images before embedding them in documents. Or use a tool that recursively scans embedded images within documents.
7. Redaction safety (PDFs)
Check: If the PDF contains redacted content, is the redaction structural (text removed) or visual (text covered)?
Where to look:
- Try selecting and copying text from redacted areas. If you can paste readable text, the redaction is visual only.
- Open the PDF in a text editor and search for text that should be redacted. If you find it, the redaction is visual only.
Common problems:
- Black rectangles drawn over text using annotation tools do not remove the text
- Highlight-and-redact workflows that cover text without removing the underlying text objects
- PDFs created by "printing" a redacted document — the print driver may or may not flatten the text layer
Fix: Use a redaction tool that removes text at the object level (Adobe Acrobat Pro's Redact tool, not the Drawing tools). Verify by attempting to select/copy text from the redacted areas. Or use a dedicated redaction checker.
8. Template paths and file system information
Check: Does the document contain file paths from your computer?
Where to look: This is not visible in Word's Properties panel. You would need to inspect the file's XML (rename .docx to .zip, open word/settings.xml, look for <w:attachedTemplate> with a file path). Or use a metadata scanning tool.
Common problems:
- Template path reveals username:
C:\Users\jsmith\AppData\... - Template path reveals organization:
\\firmserver\templates\ClientA\ - Template path reveals the original source of the document
Fix: Use a metadata tool that detects and removes template path references.
9. Software and tool attribution
Check: Does the document metadata reveal the software or AI tools used to create it?
Where to look:
- PDF: File > Properties > the "Creator" and "Producer" fields
- Word: File > Info > the application name is typically Microsoft Word
- Check for strings like "Generated with ChatGPT," "Created with Midjourney," or "Co-authored by Claude" in metadata fields
Common problems:
- AI-assisted content carries tool attribution in metadata or embedded comments
- PDF creator field reveals the conversion tool used (which may imply the original document format)
- Developer attribution footers or headers embedded in document metadata
Fix: Clear the creator, producer, and software metadata fields. Remove tool attribution strings.
10. Final verification
Check: After cleaning, re-inspect the document to confirm the metadata is actually gone.
Why this matters: Cleaning tools are not perfect. Different tools handle different fields. The only way to confirm that metadata has been removed is to re-inspect the output using the same (or more thorough) detection method.
What to verify:
- Author and company fields are empty or contain only the intended values
- No tracked changes or comments remain
- No GPS coordinates in embedded images
- No template paths or file system information
- Redactions (if present) are structural, not visual
Making it routine
The documents that cause problems are not the ones you carefully reviewed. They are the ones you sent in a hurry. The value of a checklist is not that it catches things you don't know about — it's that it catches things you know about but forget under time pressure.
Two approaches:
Manual process: Print this checklist. Run through it before every external document. Time required: 3-5 minutes per document.
Automated process: Use a document scanning tool that checks all of these automatically, produces a report, and verifies removal. Time required: under 30 seconds per document.
Either approach is better than no approach.
Purgit automates this entire checklist. Upload your document. Purgit scans for all 10 categories, removes findings, and verifies removal. One scan, one report, complete confidence.
[Scan a File Free]