Specter Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 Strip Personal Information from Word Documents November 11, 2003 By Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine In Microsoft Word 2002, when I select Properties from the File menu and click on the Summary tab, I see information I don't always want to share with others. For example, how do I clear the company and author lines? What if I want my e-mail to be anonymous? Is there any way to accomplish this without modifying the properties for every file? The company and author name may be the least of your worries. Have you ever written a venomous letter and then edited it down to something less offensive? If you've enabled the fast save feature, earlier versions of your document may still be present. If the document was edited with Track Changes enabled, a name is associated with each change. Fortunately, you can get rid of all the personal information with a few simple settings. Choose Options from the Tools menu, click on the Save tab, and uncheck the box labeled Allow fast saves. Now click on the Security tab and check the box titled Remove personal information from this file on save. In Word 2003, as shown in the screenshot above, the check box's title is slightly different: Remove personal information from file properties on save. When you save the file, the Author, Manager, Company, and Last saved by fields are cleared. Names in comments or edits are changed to simply Author. Any routing slip or e-mail header information is also removed. If the document contains tracked changes, you may want to accept them all before saving. The Allow fast saves option is global and is present in Word 2000 also. The Remove personal information option is specific to the current file and is present only in Word 2002 and later. If you want that option to be the default, click on the File Locations tab in the Tools | Options dialog and note the folder containing user templates. In that folder, open the file Normal.dot. Check the Remove personal information box as noted above, then save and close the file. All new files created from this point on will have that feature enabled by default. Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syncopator Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 Hmmm. Pertitent to my job. Useful info. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xian Saint Posted November 5, 2003 Share Posted November 5, 2003 And to back that story up (or why its useful)...I heard about a guy (so of course its true right?!?) that sent a nasty letter to his boss...that was suppose to be anonymous...(hope I spelled that close to right)...but his boss...checking the properties...could see who typed it up... Can you say F-I-R-E-D... Thanks for the tip bro...spot on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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