MetaExtractor

A vast array of unseen attributes are created by the computer when generating a file, such as the date of creation, author name or application name and version. Some of these can even be edited by users with the appropriate tools.

If you're just interested in collecting and accessing this info, though, you can turn to MetaExtractor. Built as a lightweight program that gets launched as soon as it's unzipped, it can analyze multiple files at the same time to reveal useful data.

It offers support for Microsoft Office (e.g. .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx), OpenOffice (e.g. odt, .ods) and PDF, while the latest edition extended support to SolidWorks CAD drawings. Keep in mind that it's not necessary to have any of these applications installed to be able to work with MetaExtractor. On the other hand, it requires .NET Framework.

Once you reach the main window with the simplistic look, you can start adding the files you wish to submit for analysis, either one at a time from different directories or all at once by pointing to a folder.

File analysis shouldn't take long, after which you can check out the date of creation, last modification and last access, full path, MD5 checksum, title, subject, category, company, keywords, status, user who made the last modification, revision number, hidden slide count, note count, and many others.

If specific attributes are not available within the files (such as PowerPoint slides inside Word documents to set the hidden slide count), then the fields remain empty. All displayed information can be saved to CSV-formatted files for closer investigation.

MetaExtractor comes in handy to users interested in a quick solution to get metadata from files. It worked smoothly in our tests.