M ManageMetadata Client-Side Metadata Suite

Forensic Document Inspector

Inspect hidden author, company & editing history in Word DOCX files online

Microsoft Word documents harbor deep layers of forensic metadata. Inspect original author credits, identify previous editors, audit total editing minutes, and review tracked change identities directly in your browser with 100% privacy.

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Word DOCX Properties & Author Inspector

Select or drop a Microsoft Word (.docx or .dotx) document to extract author credits, last editor username, total editing duration, and revision history.

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Supports Microsoft Word (.docx, .dotx) • Pure client-side inspection

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Document Telemetry

OpenXML Properties

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  • Select or drop a .docx document to inspect internal properties and reviewer identities.

Document Forensics: Decoding the Metadata Profile of Microsoft Word

In corporate contracting, litigation discovery, journalism, and academic review, determining who authored a document—and how much time was spent drafting it—is often critical. While ordinary readers see only the visible text rendered on the virtual page, a .docx container preserves an extensive forensic trail of author identities, revision timestamps, and enterprise environment fingerprints.

Because modern Word documents are packaged according to the Open Packaging Conventions (OPC), any standard ZIP decompression utility can unpack a .docx file into its constituent XML hierarchies. ManageMetadata brings this forensic analysis directly into your browser, parsing document relationships in real time without sending your files away.

Core Dublin Core Properties (docProps/core.xml)

  • dc:creator: The primary author who created the document, derived from the active Microsoft Office user account or operating system username.
  • cp:lastModifiedBy: The username of the person who executed the most recent save operation.
  • cp:revision: An incremental integer that increments each time the file is saved. A revision count of 1 suggests a freshly generated or copy-pasted document; high numbers (e.g., 47) indicate extensive revision history.
  • dcterms:created: Timestamp when the document was initially created (ISO 8601 UTC format).
  • dcterms:modified: Timestamp when the file was last saved to disk.

Extended Application Properties (docProps/app.xml)

  • Company: The legal name of the organization registered in the Word application license or enterprise Active Directory tenant.
  • Manager: The department supervisor or manager name assigned in document property templates.
  • TotalTime: The cumulative editing time in integer minutes.
  • Application & AppVersion: Exact word processing software and version build (e.g., "Microsoft Office Word 16.0000").
  • Template: The base template filename and path (e.g., "Normal.dotm" or custom corporate corporate templates like "FirmLegalBrief_v3.dotm").

Auditing Tracked Changes and Comment Authors (word/people.xml)

When multiple collaborators review a legal brief, contract, or academic paper using Word's Track Changes and Comment features, Word maintains an internal registry of reviewer identities in word/people.xml.

Even if a user accepts all tracked changes and deletes comments prior to sending the document, legacy reviewer entries or orphaned comment author nodes can persist in the XML tree. Our inspector scans the XML document structure to report every individual identity recorded across comment and markup streams.

Why In-Browser Inspection Is Essential for Privacy

Evaluating legal contracts, unreleased manuscripts, financial audits, or medical declarations should never involve uploading documents to third-party web servers. Many online "DOCX viewers" store user documents on cloud servers where they can be indexed, logged, or inadvertently exposed.

ManageMetadata executes 100% of the extraction logic within your browser's local sandbox memory: