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:

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