Remove Hidden Data in Microsoft Office 2003 / XP

Did you know that Microsoft Office can save hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, in Word 2003/XP, Excel 2003/XP, and PowerPoint 2003/XP files!

I was reading this article by Kim Komando on USA Today about removing hidden data in Microsoft Word documents.

“Anybody who uses Word risks exposing sensitive information. Word inserts metadata (information about data) to help identify author names, document titles, keywords, print and save dates, and names of people who have reviewed and saved a document. Metadata can also spill the beans about your place of business: your company or organization’s name, the name of the network server or hard drive on which the document is saved and any comments added.

Some of this data is easily seen in Word. And some can be viewed only by opening the document in a specialized program. Regardless, the data is there.”

And she goes on to provide tips about how to remove hidden data in Microsoft Word.

She also points to this Office 2003/XP Add-in that permanently removes hidden data and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint 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. You should run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on files only when you are ready to publish them. The Remove Hidden Data add-in does not work with Information Rights Management-protected or digitally-signed files.