Personal Information in Word Documents

You might not know that word saves a lot of personal information in every word document.

This feature has actually helped Fbi and other agencies to trace down and capture manufacturers of virus.

But the question is. How much information do you want to leave in a template you send out to a list of 10.000 persons?

What information is stored

Depending on the office application and version different things will be saved. But information that could be saved in your document are the following,

Your name Your initials Your company or organization name The name of your computer The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document The names of previous document authors Document revisions Document versions Template information Hidden text Comments

Basic removal on the information

The following steps are the basic way to remove the personal information from a document. This may not be completely accurate in all versions of word and a visit to microsoft .com is advice (search for remove personal information+word).

Open word and the document you wish to clean. Choose save as and in your upper right click the tools button.

The windows opening up should have a check box with a text similar to this, “Remove personal information from file on save”.

Check this box and save.

But verify these steps for your version directly on microsofts website.