How to Check PDF Metadata: Four Fields to Review Before Sending
Check a PDF’s title, author, creator, and producer in Firefox. See what we found in ten files, what Document Properties cannot show, and what to check after editing.
A PDF can carry an author name, a title, and the name of the application that created it, even when that information is not visible in the document itself.
Metadata is not a problem simply because it is present. But before publishing anonymously or sending a document made on a personal computer, you can check for information you did not intend to share.
Four fields to check in Firefox
Open the PDF in Firefox, then choose Document Properties from the ≫ menu on the right of the toolbar.
No additional software is needed.
Start with these four fields:
- Title: The document title, stored separately from its file name
- Author: The name of a person or an organization
- Creator: The application used to create the document
- PDF Producer: The software used to convert it to PDF
Check the creation and modification dates too, if they matter for your document.
The question is more than whether a field has a value. Is this information meant to be visible to the person receiving the file?
A company document naming the company, or a PDF naming its creating application, does not automatically need editing. A personal name in a PDF intended for anonymous publication is a reason to look more closely.
Nine of our ten PDFs named their creation or conversion software
On 11 August 2026, we examined ten PDFs we had on hand.
Two contained an author name. Nine named the application that created the document or the software that converted it to PDF.
These are results from those ten files, not an estimate for PDFs in general. They did show that a file can contain information you cannot see by reading its pages.
Metadata also helps people organize and search for documents. Our purpose is to check whether the information is intentional, rather than treat its presence as a danger.
If you find information you want to remove
One option is to check and edit the document properties in the original Word or PowerPoint file, then create the PDF again. Some PDF editors also let you edit metadata.
A document properties dialog does not show every piece of information inside a PDF. Names and addresses in the page text, as well as hidden content, are separate from the metadata discussed here.
For an important document, reopen the revised PDF and check that its information is what you intended.
Notes: the scope of our checks
We tested on 11 August 2026 using Firefox 148.0.2 on Linux, with the interface in English. We used pypdf 6.14.2 to tally information inside the files.
The Firefox steps were performed through browser automation, and field names were read from the dialog. We did not test the interface by clicking through it manually.
Our hands-on checks did not cover Adobe Acrobat, Google Chrome, or the Japanese Firefox interface. We also did not verify what remains after metadata removal.
We did not comprehensively inspect personal information in the page text, hidden layers, embedded files, or other hidden content.
If checking each time is difficult, Legacy Tools' Safe Attachment Check displays PDF information such as the title, author, company, and creating application when you attach a file.
It does not remove information or decide whether a file is safe. Its role is to show information for you to review.
Sources
- Mozilla PDF.js — Document Properties: English interface labels
- Adobe Acrobat — Document properties and metadata overview
- Adobe Acrobat — Edit document metadata in PDFs
- Microsoft Support — View or change the properties for an Office file