Revealing Word’s Hidden Secrets
As Propellerhead points out Microsoft Word documents are not always what they seem. They can contain a wealth of hidden information and every so often this forgotten privacy and security flaw is forgotten as someone — usually a smart journalist — disassembles and finds something embarrassing inside a Word document sent to them on disc or in an email.
There are several different types of data concealed in documents and one of the easiest to remove is Metadata. This contains information about you, your PC, document revisions, comments and all sorts of other things. If you are using Word 2000 you should read Microsoft KB article 237361 for Word 2003 users the place to go is KB 825576. Your documents could also be concealing Field Codes and links so you might want to have a look at a little freeware add-on called the Hidden File Detector.
This adds a new command to the Tools menu, and when you’ve finished work on a document, simply click on ‘Detect Hidden Files’ and you’ll see straight away is there’s anything lurking between the lines that shouldn’t be there. Don’t forget there’s a veritable cornucopia of tips and tweaks over at PCTopTips
