Word+Hidden+Data+Removal+tool

Word Hidden Data Removal tool

As explain in another tip in this Edition many users of Office 2003 and XP are unaware that documents can contain hidden data that may be available to other people ‐ this usually happens when you use features such as such as ʹchange trackingʹ and ʹcommentsʹ.

The upshot is that if you send the document with this hidden data to other people (such as a emailing a CV, confidential proposal or legal advice), they may be able to view the data.

The Remove Hidden Data add‐in is a tool that you can use to remove personal or hidden data that might not be immediately apparent when you view the document in your Microsoft Office application.

You can run the Remove Hidden Data add‐in on individual files from within your Office XP or Office 2003 application.

Or, you can run Remove Hidden Data on multiple files at once from the command line.

In either case, to run the tool you must have the application installed in which the document was created.

The Offrhdreadme.htm file included with the add‐in includes a complete list of all of the types of data that the tool will help to remove.

By default, you can locate this file in the \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Remove Hidden Data Tool\1033 directory in the drive where you installed the tool.

If you installed the tool to a different directory, you can locate this file in the \1033 directory, a subdirectory of the add‐in installation folder.

Microsoft provides the following advice:

You should run the Remove Hidden Data add‐in on files when you are ready to publish them. This is because some of the data that the tool remove is used by Office for collaboration features, such as Track Changes,

Comments, and Send fo

You should always save to a new file name, rather than overwrite the original file with the new document, in order to preserve a copy of the document containing the original data The Remove Hidden Data add‐in does not work with Information Rights Management‐protected or digitally‐signed files.

You download from here:‐

[] When it has downloaded install it and you will see the above message.