What Is This About?

Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents contain hidden data in the form of collaborative data such as tracked changes and comments as well as metadata such as as the author, company and editing dates/times for the document. There may be times that it is important that the recipient of your file doesn’t see this information particularly in the work environment but sometimes such information may also be in documents you send privately and could be a problem. This post gives you some details on how to remove or change the data.

Tracked Changes in Word and Excel Documents

2 or 3 years ago there was some headline news where such hidden data had revealed embarrassing or confidential information for companies. Tracked changes and comments may contain commercially sensitive information and metadata may reveal that the document did not originate with the company or author claiming ownership. Even information such as editing time, last edited by and the created/accessed/modified dates may reveal unwanted details. While this may sound a little paranoid I have found information in many documents that clearly the sender would not have wanted me to have.

Metadata in a Word Document (Excel and PowerPoint are Similar)

This post refers mainly to Office XP (2002) and Office 2003 suites. Office 2007 is similar but has a built in tool for removing some of the data.

What Can You Do?

There are 3 simple solutions to the problem.

1. Manually Remove the data from the document

2. Use a utility to remove the data

3. Convert the document to another format such as PDF

1. Manually Remove Data

Open the document in the appropriate program (Word, Excel or PowerPoint). The exact layout of menus, toolbars and options varies with the different programs but the principals are the same.

Properties Metadata

The Properties Metadata can be accessed from the File dropdown and then click on Properties, some of the data can now be manually deleted or edited. To “reset” the editing data create a new file using the Save As option (make sure you save the original first or you may have loose any edited/deleted metadata)

The following screenshot shows how the statistics change when the new file is saved:

Tracked Changes

Both Word and Excel have tools for Tracked Changes, they are implemented and accessed differently but the principals are the same. Both programs have a tracked changes option under the Tools dropdown menu in the menubar. Word also has a Reviewing Toolbar

To remove the tracked changes in Word you can individually accept or reject the changes. There are also options to accept or reject all changes. The dropdown to the left end of the toolbar can be used to show the tracked changes in the Final or Original documents. I recommend checking that the accept or reject all changes options are not available “grayed out” to ensure there are no further changes that you have missed.

In excel go the Tools menu and click on Track Changes then Accept or Reject Changes…

This shows the Select dialog window:

Having made your selection the Accept or Reject window is displayed:

This gives plenty of detail to allow you to decide and will present all the different changes that may have been made to a cell.

Again you have the option to accept or reject all.

PowerPoint only has the option to add comments:

Each comment is numbered and minimises to a small box in the top left of the slide:

Comments have to be located and deleted manually unless you use the tool described below.

2. Use a utility to remove the data

Microsoft provide the Office 2003/XP Add-in: Remove Hidden Data this can be downloaded from this link but requires “Validation” for “customers running genuine Microsoft Office” N.B This tool is not required for Office 2007 which has the built in which includes the “Document Inspector” feature which replaces the “Remove Hidden Data” add-in.

Microsoft state:

Overview

With this add-in you can permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Word 2003/XP, Excel 2003/XP, and PowerPoint 2003/XP files.
When you distribute an Office document electronically, the document might contain information that you do not want to share publicly, such as information you’ve designated as “hidden” or information that allows you to collaborate on writing and editing the document with others.
The Remove Hidden Data add-in is a tool that you can use to remove personal or hidden data that might not be immediately apparent when you view the document in your Microsoft Office application.
You can run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on individual files from within your Office XP or Office 2003 application. Or, you can run Remove Hidden Data on multiple files at once from the command line. In either case, to run the tool you must have the application installed in which the document was created.

So download and install the tool and remove the hidden data quickly and simply.

3. Convert the document to another format such as PDF

There are plenty of free tools available to convert Office documents to PDF. These generally take the form of a printer driver. A quick Google for “Convert doc to PDF freeware” will reveal several alternatives. One that I have used without problems in the past is CutePDF Writer

CutePDF Writer installs itself as a “printer subsystem”. This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!
FREE for commercial and non-commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Freeware, Hints & Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.