MS Word documents contain hidden meta data that contain information about
the author of the document. It can also contain additional information
like comments and remarks, previous authors or revisions. While that is
normally not a problem for the author because most recipients do not
care or know that those information are available it can become a
problem in some cases.
Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data tool
for Office 2003 and Office XP is an add-in that provides the user with
an option to remove that meta data from the documents. The application
that created the document has to be installed to make this work though.
It will NOT remove information from the following types of documents:
- Documents using rights-management permissions
- Protected documents
- Digitally signed documents
- Shared workbooks
Office 2007 has the ability to remove hidden
data built in.