When this helps
You clear Title and Author before sharing a PDF, then wonder whether anything identifying remains. Document properties are only one place to look. Comments, attachments and photographs inside the PDF can carry their own information.
Try it in the checker
Use Summary for the initial privacy inventory. In Everything, search for annotations, attachments, EXIF, GPS or a specific name. Each table tells you which layer was read.
For deeper inspection, use Explore this PDF to open Findings or Objects & XMP. The object view distinguishes records reached from the current document from unreferenced records. Unreferenced means the current graph does not point to that object; it does not prove the bytes are harmless, deleted or from a particular person.
Read the result in context
A synthetic example: the document Author is empty, but a comment still names “Sample Reviewer”. That is an annotation field, not evidence that Sample Reviewer created the document. Another example is a placed photograph with camera metadata. Removing document properties does not by itself remove the photograph’s metadata.
Use Remove PDF Metadata when you decide to clean a copy. Inspect the output and its verification results before sharing. Keep the original separately if you need to preserve its history.
What this cannot establish
This is a metadata and structure inspection, not content redaction. A name printed on a page, a screenshot of an address or readable text in an attachment remains identifying even if every metadata field is empty. No findings means none were found within completed checks; skipped or unsupported content still needs review.