the MOST

Your document tells people more about you than you think.  No, I’m not talking about when people look for double meanings in your words or calculate the average number of syllables you wrote to decide how smart you are.  There can be hidden information in your documents that a savvy user could access.

Office 2007 has a built-in tool, called the Document Inspector, to help you remove hidden information.  This way, when you send an electronic copy of your document, you can be sure that it doesn’t contain information you don’t want to send.  I helped a PhD candidate use the Document Inspector a few days ago when she needed to submit a paper anonymously.

What kind of hidden information are we talking about?

The kind of information varies depending on the program.  For the full list, and full descriptions, look at the  Office Help file for the Document Inspector.

• Comments and Tracked Changes - This is reviewer information you may not realize is still in your document.  See the post about Track Changes.
• Document Properties and Personal Information - This can include username, author, and reviewer information.  This is also called metadata, meaning data about data.
• Headers, Footers, and Watermarks
• Hidden or Invisible Content - Text, worksheets, columns, rows, slides, and other things that are formatted as hidden or invisible.
• Document Server Properties - Information about the server your document is saved on, assuming it’s saved on a server.
• Custom XML Data

Once again, for the full list for each program, and more details, look at the tables in the Office Help file.

How do I use the Document Inspector?

1. Make a copy of the file, in case you want an uninspected one later.  Some of the changes the Document Inspector makes cannot be undone.
2. Click on the Office button, click on Prepare, then select Inspect Document.
3. Check the boxes for the kind of inspections you want the Document Inspector to do.
4. Click Inspect.
5. The Document Inspector will let you know what categories of data it found.  Click Remove All for any category you want to remove the data for.
6. Click Close.

The Fine Print

• Undo may not restore data that the Document Inspector removed.
• If you’re working on an Excel workbook saved as a shared workbook, the Comments and Annotations, Document Properties and Personal Information, and Headers and Footers inspectors won’t work.
• If you’re using one of the Open Document Formats (.odt, .ods, .odp), you’ll have to run the Document Inspector every time you save.