how to view the full metadata of any type of file?

Question

I know that programs (like Word,Adobe Reader) save more metadata in the file than is shown (such as IP address of the computer where the file was created), but I don't know how to see it.

Answer 1

There are many options where application stores metadata for documents. Here are three most used:

Adobe and Microsoft usually use XMP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform).

There are also extended file attributes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes).

Specifically on NTFS, an application can use Alternate Data Stream (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/105763).

These links should guide you how to read/use these metadata.

Answer 2

There are several applications for viewing file metadata. ExifTool is a free command line utility that lets you see just about all of a file's metadata. You can also use it as a Perl library. Adobe Bridge gives you access to most of the metadata in image formats.

However, few file formats store the IP address of the computer where the file was created. This is partly because it's considered intrusive, and partly because a computer can have different IP addresses simultaneously on different networks (e.g, a LAN IP address and a public IP address), so it wouldn't be a very meaningful datum.

Answer 3

You can use exiftool to read metadata about a file. There also some other tools you can use freely. But programs (like word, acrobat, paint) generally dont gets your ip adress to store as a metadata because lots of internet user dont use static ip (Getting and storing ip adress is problematic because it means privacy violation). You can gets some metadata information for example user of the computer as a creator of the some document or time when the document was created or GPS coordinates where the some pictures were taken (if the device gps option was opened) and like this