{"id":6889,"date":"2014-04-11T05:19:42","date_gmt":"2014-04-11T05:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drprem.com\/howto\/?p=6889"},"modified":"2020-08-19T06:39:35","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T06:39:35","slug":"remove-personal-information-microsoft-office-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drprem.com\/life\/remove-personal-information-microsoft-office-documents","title":{"rendered":"How to remove personal information from your Microsoft Office documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contrary to the common conception that Microsoft Office documents only contain the information you type on its pages, the fact is that each spreadsheet and word document you create contain hidden metadata, which can tell the receiver everything about the document, such as the people who worked on it, previous versions, the time the document was created and how long did the creator work on it. This information is particularly critical, especially if you\u2019re an employee who wants to fake the time you took to create a document in front of your boss and your boss quickly checks the metadata to see that it took a few minutes for the job. So, if you\u2019re getting worried about the confidential information your Office documents can reveal, here are a few things you can do to delete the metadata associated with your documents and spreadsheets.<\/p>\n

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View the data:<\/b><\/p>\n

For the latest Office 2013 and its predecessor Office 2010, you have to click on the File Menu, then head over to the Info tab and click Inspect Document. The Inspect Document tool shows all the type of information that each Office document holds in its memory in the form of metadata.<\/p>

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Although in the new versions of MS Office, the information is a lot more revealing that in some older versions, it is still something that most users easily miss or are not aware of. In the older Microsoft Office 2007, you will have to click the Office orb and then head over to prepare tab and then click Inspect Document. After that, you will have to click on Check for Issues button, click Inspect Document and then head over to read the information about a particular type of metadata that you want to examine.<\/p>\n

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Removing the metadata:<\/b><\/p>\n

Once you have clicked Inspect, the software will examine the document for all types of metadata that it holds and will display it on a screen. Here, you can click on the Remove All button to remove all the metadata that is associated with the document.<\/p>\n

However, do keep in mind that you will not be able to recover the lost data and hence if you want a file with the metadata information intact, you can save the new document with a different name. Still, if you believe that you won\u2019t be needing this revealing information, you can simply save the file as it is, and this time it won\u2019t reveal anything about the document\u2019s history to anybody.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/b><\/p>\n

Microsoft Office stores a lot of information, in the form of metadata, about all the documents you create. If you want to make sure that nobody gets to know anything about the document\u2019s history, here are things you should do to remove metadata associated with every MS Office document you create.<\/p>\n

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