In this article:
Overview
Document Cleanup helps you tidy and standardise a document by applying multiple cleanup actions at once, instead of fixing issues manually.
Designed to support the finalisation process, Document Cleanup ensures your document meets required technical standards. By applying a consistent set of cleanup actions, it prepares your document for sharing, review, or archiving with confidence.
How to use Document Cleanup
Document Cleanup works in just two steps:
Select the operations
Select one or more cleanup operations to apply to your document.
You can combine multiple operations, such as removing consecutive spaces and empty paragraphs, and run them together.
Not all operations can be combined. When incompatible operations are selected, the action buttons are disabled.
2. Run the cleanup
Replace opened document: this will immediately perform the selected operation on the active document on the left. You will see the changes happen immediately.
New Docx/New PDF: this allows you to generate a new Docx or PDF file on which the selected operations have been performed. Your active document will therefore remain unchanged.
Save a set of operations to reuse later
An optional step is to save a set of operations so that you can recall them later.
This means you don't have to set each operation individually every time, but can simply recall a saved set and apply it immediately to your document.
Operations
Replace footers
Update footers across the document by:
Replacing all footers with new text
Replacing footers only when specific text is present
Adding footers to sections that don’t have one
Copying footers from another document
Removing footers
Replace headers
Update headers across the document by:
Replacing all headers with new text
Replacing headers only when specific text is present
Adding headers to sections that don’t have one
Copying headers from another document
Removing headers
Replace placeholders
Extract all placeholders in the document and choose, for each one, to:
Replace it with text
Delete it
Leave it unchanged
Remove consecutive spaces
This operation automatically removes consecutive spaces from the document.
These unnecessary spaces can create small gaps in the layout and may interfere with how Word formats the document.
LawVu Draft removes all consecutive spaces in one step.
Remove empty paragraphs
Removes unnecessary blank paragraphs that create unwanted gaps or layout issues in the document.
Remove manually inserted paragraph numbers
This operation removes manually inserted (“hardcoded”) numbers from the beginning of paragraphs.
For example, a paragraph number such as 5.1 may have been typed manually rather than applied using Word’s automatic numbering. When this operation is run, LawVu Draft removes the typed number and any following space.
Notes
Only numbers are targeted; bullets are not affected.
Numbers in headers, footers, and footnotes are not changed.
Remove metadata
This operation removes hidden metadata from a .DOCX file to prevent unintended disclosure of information.
You can also enable Remove personal information on save, which automatically strips personal information from the document each time it is saved.
Metadata removed includes:
Author and editor names
Manager and company information
Template details
Document properties (such as title, subject, and keywords)
File paths and storage locations
Custom document properties
Removing this information helps avoid exposing confidential or embarrassing details when documents are shared externally.
Accept all track changes
This operation accepts all tracked changes in the active document.
Delete all comments
Removes all comments from the document (of every party). If left unchecked, comments are left unchanged.Stop tracking changes
Turns off Track Changes in the resulting document, so any new edits are not recorded. In other words, this is similar to disabling the Track changes button in the Review tab of MS Word.
Reject all changes
This operation is similar to the Accept all changes operation, but rejects instead of accepts all changes.
Swap track changes author
This operation replaces the author name on tracked changes with a single author.
The typical use case is to resolve a situation where a single DOCX-file has gone through the hands of multiple legal professionals, who all have made changes, and you want to avoid that the customer/client/counterparty would notice this.
Instead, you want the customer/client/counterparty to see a single name appear in the track changes (e.g., the name of the partner).
You can also choose to only modify the changes made by one author.
Another setting you can activate, is whether to also change the author of the comments. If so, then all the comments will appear to have been made by this same person (Kate Simpson in the screenshot above).
Append & prepend document
This operation allows you to append a PDF-file or DOCX-document at the end of the active document (append) or at the front (prepend).
Common use cases include:
Adding a PDF cover page to a client-facing document without converting it to Word
Attaching static annexes or schedules to a contract
Appending standard terms and conditions while keeping them separate from the main document
The only setting you must configure is selecting the right document that you want append/prepend. You can either select a PDF-file or a DOCX-file.
Add protection to DOCX-file
This operation allows you to add several kinds of protection to your active file.
Add watermark - Adds a watermark to the background of each page and prevents recipients from changing the document without a password.
Allow only comments - Prevents all changes except comments. The document behaves much like a read-only PDF with commenting enabled.
Allow only revisions - Automatically enables Track Changes so that any edits made by others are always visible when the document is returned.
Read-only - Prevents any changes to the document.
Allow only forms - Allows others to fill in form fields only, such as dropdowns or text fields.