How to change or remove author names on Word comments

1Change the name on your future comments

1. File › Options › General, under Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office.
2. Change User name and Initials.
3. If you are signed in to Microsoft 365, tick Always use these values regardless of sign in to Office. Without it, Word uses the name on your account instead.

This only affects comments and tracked changes you make from now on. Everything already in the document keeps the name it was made with.

2Remove every name with the Document Inspector

1. Save a copy of the document first — this cannot be undone.
2. File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document, and click Inspect.
3. Next to Document Properties and Personal Information, click Remove All, then save.

Every comment and tracked change now shows “Author” instead of a name, and the file’s author properties are cleared. Word also turns on the document setting Remove personal information from file properties on save (File › Options › Trust Center › Trust Center Settings › Privacy Options), so comments added later are anonymous too, until you untick it.

The limits:

• All or nothing. You cannot keep your own firm’s names and remove the client’s, or show one reviewer as “Checker” and another as “Client”. Everyone becomes “Author”, so the reader can no longer tell reviewers apart.
• It is a save-time setting. It applies to the document you run it on; the original is only safe if you made a copy.

3Rename one reviewer’s comments with a macro

In Word’s object model a comment’s Author and Initial can be changed. This macro asks for a name and a replacement and changes every comment and reply by that person. Run it on a copy.

Sub RenameCommentAuthor()
    Dim fromName As String, toName As String
    fromName = InputBox("Change comments made by (exactly as shown):")
    If fromName = "" Then Exit Sub
    toName = InputBox("...to this name:", , "Checker")
    If toName = "" Then Exit Sub

    Dim c As Comment, changed As Long
    For Each c In ActiveDocument.Comments
        If c.Author = fromName Then
            c.Author = toName
            c.Initial = Left(toName, 1)
            changed = changed + 1
        End If
    Next c
    MsgBox changed & " comments changed."
End Sub

• Tracked changes are not covered. A revision’s author is read-only in VBA, so a macro cannot rename the person behind an insertion or deletion. See the next method.
• Dates stay. The date and time on each comment are not changed.
• Check modern comments afterwards. In some Microsoft 365 builds the name shown on a modern comment also comes from the document’s list of people, so look at the result in Word before you send it.

4Rename tracked-change authors in the XML

A .docx is a zip of XML files, and every comment and tracked change carries its author in a w:author attribute. Editing them by hand works for anything, and is easy to get wrong, so work on a copy.

1. Close the document in Word. Copy it, and rename the copy from .docx to .zip.
2. Extract the zip into a folder. The files that matter are in word\: document.xml (tracked changes in the body), comments.xml, and, if present, people.xml, header*.xml and footer*.xml.
3. Open each in a text editor that handles UTF-8, and replace w:author="Jānis Bērziņš" with w:author="Checker". For comments, also replace the initials in w:initials="JB"; in people.xml the attribute is w15:author. To drop dates, remove the w:date="…" attributes.
4. Select the contents of the folder (not the folder itself), zip them, and rename the result back to .docx.
5. Open it in Word. If Word reports the file is corrupt, an edit broke the XML; start again from the copy.

5What none of these change

6An anonymised copy in one step: Comment Navigator Pro

Comment Navigator is a Word add-in for Windows. Its Pro anonymised copy lists every reviewer found in the comments, replies and tracked changes, and lets you choose what each one becomes — “Client”, “Checker”, your company name. It replaces their names and initials, removes the dates, and saves the result as a copy; the original keeps the real names.

Like the methods above, it changes comment and revision metadata only: names in the body text and @mentions inside comment text are not changed. Pro comes with a 14-day trial that starts the first time you use a Pro feature.