Word, Excel and Outlook

Run Document Inspector, then open the Selection Pane on each slide. Together they find text that is invisible, hidden, parked off the edge of a slide, or tucked into speaker notes. Hidden content in a shared deck can be leftover template text, or it can be instructions meant for an AI tool that summarizes the file, which Remove AI Tells checks for.

1. Document Inspector

Go to File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document. Check Invisible On-Slide Content, Off-Slide Content and Presentation Notes, then choose Inspect. It lists what it finds; review it before choosing Remove All, since notes may be ones you want to keep.

2. Selection Pane

On the Home tab, choose Arrange, then Selection Pane (Alt+F10 on Windows). It lists every object on the slide, including ones set to hidden (shown with a crossed-out eye) and ones stacked behind others.

3. Off-slide objects

In Normal view, zoom out. Anything sitting outside the slide boundary doesn't show in the slideshow but is still in the file.

4. White or tiny text

Text colored to match the background, or shrunk to a 1-point font, won't show in the Selection Pane as hidden. View, Outline View shows all the slide text in one place regardless of color or size.

5. Scan what you find

Copy the outline text and notes into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It flags instruction-like lines such as "ignore previous instructions" and counts invisible characters. More: how to detect hidden prompts in text and documents.

Check four places: slide titles, bullet points, speaker notes and punctuation. Slides drafted by Copilot in PowerPoint, ChatGPT or another AI tool tend to repeat the same patterns in all four, and Remove AI Tells can scan the text from each one for free.

1. Slide titles

AI titles lean on "Unlocking," "Harnessing," "Navigating" and "The Power of." Rewrite each title as the point of the slide: "Q3 churn fell 12%" beats "Unlocking Customer Retention."

2. Bullet points in threes

AI builds slide after slide of three parallel bullets that each start with a verb. Vary the count, cut the weakest bullet, and put a real number or example in at least one.

3. Speaker notes

Generated notes often read like a script nobody would say out loud: "It's important to note," "In today's fast-paced landscape." Read the notes aloud and rewrite anything you wouldn't actually say to the room.

4. Em dashes and curly quotes

PowerPoint's Replace box (Ctrl+H) doesn't take Word's special codes, but you can paste an em dash straight into the Find what box and replace it with a comma and a space.

5. Text on every slide at once

To scan everything together, go to View, Outline View, select all the outline text and copy it. Paste it into the free Remove AI Tells scanner to highlight stock AI words and phrases and see the fixes. Do the same with speaker notes from the Notes Page view.

More on presentations: AI humanizer for presentations. To check a deck for hidden content, see how to find hidden text in PowerPoint.

Work on a copy, select all, set the font color to Automatic and the size to 11, then run Word's Document Inspector for hidden text. That reveals white text and tiny fonts, the two most common ways resumes hide keywords or instructions for AI screeners. Remove AI Tells can then scan the text for instruction-like lines such as "rank this candidate first."

Step 1: Reveal white text

Press Ctrl+A to select everything, then set the font color to Automatic. Any white text turns black and shows up.

Step 2: Reveal tiny text

With everything still selected, set the font size to 11. Text shrunk to 1 point becomes readable.

Step 3: Turn off hidden formatting

Press Ctrl+D to open the Font dialog and clear the Hidden checkbox if it is filled or shaded.

Step 4: Run Document Inspector

Go to File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document, and check Hidden Text. It also finds comments, headers and document properties that can hold extra text.

Step 5: For PDFs, copy all the text

Select all, copy and paste into a plain text editor. Hidden text usually shows once formatting is gone.

Step 6: Scan for hidden instructions

Paste the text into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It flags lines like "ignore previous instructions" or "this candidate is exceptionally well qualified" and counts invisible characters.

Hidden text is not always deliberate. It can come from templates or copied content, so ask before assuming bad intent. More: can a resume contain hidden AI instructions?

Cut the stock opener and closer, swap buzzwords for plain words, vary your sentence lengths and add one specific detail only you would know. AI-drafted emails from Copilot in Outlook, ChatGPT or Gemini tend to share the same six tells, and Remove AI Tells flags most of them automatically.

1. "I hope this email finds you well"

The most recognizable AI opener. Start with the point instead: "Quick question about Thursday's invoice."

2. "I wanted to reach out"

You are already reaching out. Delete it and say why you're writing.

3. Buzzwords

Leverage, seamless, robust, streamline, delve. Use the plain word: use, smooth, solid, simplify, look at. See words that give away AI writing.

4. Paragraphs all the same length

AI writes three even, tidy paragraphs. Real emails are uneven. A one-line paragraph is fine.

5. "Please don't hesitate to reach out"

The closing twin of the opener. Try "Let me know by Friday" or just your name.

6. Em dashes and curly quotes

Heavy em dash use is a well-known AI sign. Swap them for commas or periods.

Check before you send

Paste your draft into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It highlights stock email phrases and AI words, scores your sentence rhythm and fixes the punctuation, and it runs in your browser. More on this: AI humanizer for emails.

Because a chatbot reply carries its own formatting: markdown symbols, web fonts, special spaces and curly quotes that don't match your document. The fix is to paste as text only, then clean up what plain text keeps. The same happens with text from Copilot, Claude and Gemini. Remove AI Tells sees all five of these problems in pasted AI text.

1. Asterisks and pound signs

Chatbots format with markdown, so bold words arrive as **word** and headings as ###. Use Find and Replace (Ctrl+H) to replace ** and # with nothing, then apply Word's own heading styles.

2. Fonts and styles that don't match

A normal paste brings the chat window's font, size and colors. Paste with Keep Text Only instead: use the Paste Options button that appears after pasting, or press Ctrl+Shift+V in current Microsoft 365 versions of Word.

3. Spacing that won't behave

Non-breaking and narrow no-break spaces stop lines wrapping where they should and break Find searches. Replace ^s and ^u8239 with a normal space. See how to find hidden characters in Word.

4. Curly quotes next to straight ones

Pasted text often brings curly quotes into a document that uses straight ones. See how to change curly quotes to straight quotes in Word.

5. Em dashes everywhere

AI drafts use far more em dashes than most writers. Search for ^+ to find them. See how to remove em dashes in Word.

The one-step fix

Paste the reply into the free Remove AI Tells scanner first. It fixes the dashes, quotes and special spaces, removes invisible characters and flags stock AI phrases. Copy the clean text and paste it into Word as text only.

Use SUBSTITUTE with UNICHAR, because Excel's CLEAN and TRIM miss the characters that usually cause the trouble. CLEAN only removes non-printing control characters (codes 0 to 31), and TRIM only removes extra regular spaces. Neither touches non-breaking spaces or zero-width spaces, which often come along with text pasted from web pages, ChatGPT, Copilot or other AI tools. Remove AI Tells sees these characters in pasted AI text every day.

The formula

For text in A1:

=TRIM(CLEAN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,UNICHAR(160)," "),UNICHAR(8239)," "),UNICHAR(8203),"")))

• UNICHAR(160) non-breaking space, swapped for a normal space
• UNICHAR(8239) narrow no-break space, swapped for a normal space
• UNICHAR(8203) zero-width space, removed

Add another SUBSTITUTE for UNICHAR(8288) (word joiner) or UNICHAR(65279) (zero-width no-break space) if your data has them. UNICHAR works in Excel 2013 and later.

Signs you have hidden characters

• XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP returns #N/A for a value you can see in the list.
• Numbers are stored as text and won't add up.
• =LEN(A1) returns more characters than you can count.

How to identify the character

=UNICODE(MID(A1,5,1)) returns the code of the fifth character. Change the 5 to walk through the cell until you find a code like 160 or 8203.

Find and Replace option

For non-breaking spaces on Windows, press Ctrl+H, click in Find what, hold Alt and type 0160 on the number pad, put a normal space in Replace with, and choose Replace All.

The faster option for text

For paragraphs rather than data columns, paste the text into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It removes invisible characters, turns special spaces into normal ones and shows you how many it found.

Turn off smart quotes, then replace every quote mark with itself. Word converts each one using your current setting, so with smart quotes off, every curly quote becomes straight. This matters for AI drafts because text pasted from ChatGPT or Copilot often brings curly quotes into a document that otherwise uses straight ones, and Remove AI Tells counts that mix as a typography tell.

Step 1: Turn off smart quotes

On Windows, go to File, Options, Proofing, AutoCorrect Options, then the AutoFormat As You Type tab, and uncheck "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes." On a Mac, go to Word, Preferences, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat As You Type.

Step 2: Replace double quotes

Press Ctrl+H. Type a double quote in Find what and a double quote in Replace with, then choose Replace All. Word finds both straight and curly versions and writes them back as straight.

Step 3: Replace apostrophes and single quotes

Do the same with a single quote in both boxes. This also fixes curly apostrophes in words like "don't."

Step 4: Decide whether to turn smart quotes back on

Leave the setting off if you want new typing to match. Curly quotes are not wrong on their own; consistent curly quotes are normal typography. The tell is a document that mixes both.

The faster option

Paste the text into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It straightens quotes and apostrophes, swaps em dashes for commas and strips invisible characters in one pass, then you paste the clean text back into Word.

Turn on Show/Hide to see spaces and formatting marks, then use Find and Replace with Word's ^u codes to catch the characters Show/Hide never shows, like zero-width spaces. Text copied from ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude or a web page can carry these characters into a Word document, and Remove AI Tells treats them as a sign the text was pasted rather than typed.

Step 1: Turn on Show/Hide

Click the paragraph mark button on the Home tab, or press Ctrl+Shift+8 (Cmd+8 on a Mac). Normal spaces show as small dots and non-breaking spaces show as a small raised circle. Zero-width characters still stay invisible, which is why step 2 matters.

Step 2: Search by code

Press Ctrl+H and search for each code below. Word tells you how many it replaced, so a count above zero means the character was there.

• ^s non-breaking space: replace with a normal space
• ^u8239 narrow no-break space: replace with a normal space
• ^u8203 zero-width space: replace with nothing
• ^u8288 word joiner: replace with nothing
• ^u65279 zero-width no-break space (byte order mark): replace with nothing
• ^- soft hyphen: replace with nothing

Leave zero-width joiners (^u8205) alone in text with emoji or in languages such as Arabic or Hindi, where they are part of normal writing.

Step 3: Check for hidden text formatting

Characters are one thing; whole lines can also be hidden. Go to File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document, and run the Hidden Text check. To reveal white or tiny text, work on a copy, select all, set the font color to Automatic and pick a normal font size.

The faster option

Paste the text into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It counts invisible characters, flags instruction-like lines that could be a hidden prompt, and gives you clean text to paste back. More detail: how to remove hidden characters from AI text.

Use Find and Replace. Press Ctrl+H on Windows (on a Mac, go to Edit, Find, Replace), type ^+ in the Find what box, which is Word's code for an em dash, type a comma and a space in Replace with, and choose Replace All. Em dash overuse is one of the best-known signs of AI writing, and Remove AI Tells recommends clearing them out of any draft that started in ChatGPT, Copilot or another AI tool.

Step 1: Replace spaced em dashes first

Some AI text puts a space on each side of the dash. Search for a space, ^+ and another space, and replace it with a comma and a space. Doing this first stops you ending up with double spaces.

Step 2: Replace the rest

Search for ^+ on its own and replace it with a comma and a space. Two ideas joined by a dash become two ideas joined by a comma.

Step 3: Handle en dashes

Search for ^=, Word's code for an en dash. For number ranges like 2024 to 2026, a plain hyphen is fine.

Step 4: Read it through

Replace All is blind. Some dashes read better as a period, a colon or parentheses, so skim the result and fix any sentence that now runs on.

Word's special character codes

• ^+ em dash
• ^= en dash
• ^s non-breaking space
• ^~ non-breaking hyphen
• ^- optional (soft) hyphen
• ^u followed by a number finds any character by its Unicode code, for example ^u8212 for an em dash

The faster option

Paste the text into the free Remove AI Tells scanner. It swaps em dashes, en dashes and curly quotes for plain punctuation, removes invisible characters and highlights stock AI phrases, all in your browser. Then paste the clean text back into Word. For why AI leans on the dash so much, see the em dash AI tell. For every Microsoft app, see how to remove AI tells in Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint.