Can you "sanitize" a Word 2007 doc to eliminate hidden info?

[jimRedfield]

I'd like to know that I'm sending out just the text on the page when I send
certain Word docs to others. Password protections that restrict a reader from
seeing certain parts of a doc are, at best, weak, when you're sending
financial info or invoices (not hard to hack). I'm hoping there's a way to do
a Save-As that sanitizes the doc down to just what's visible on the page and
guarantees that nothing else in the underlying file goes along.

Sending a doc as an image of course accomplishes just what I want, but it
makes it inconvenient for the recipient - he can't do a search on the text,
he can't copy and paste from it, and its protection method is a bit 'in your
face,' without subtlety - not what we want with our clients.

Advice/help appreciated. ...and if you know how to do this in Word, perhaps
you know how to do it in Excel too. Thanks in advance. - Jim Redfield

 

[Twayne]

In

I'd like to know that I'm sending out just the text on the page when
I send certain Word docs to others. Password protections that
restrict a reader from seeing certain parts of a doc are, at best,
weak, when you're sending financial info or invoices (not hard to
hack). I'm hoping there's a way to do a Save-As that sanitizes the
doc down to just what's visible on the page and guarantees that
nothing else in the underlying file goes along.

Sending a doc as an image of course accomplishes just what I want,
but it makes it inconvenient for the recipient - he can't do a search
on the text, he can't copy and paste from it, and its protection
method is a bit 'in your face,' without subtlety - not what we want
with our clients.

Advice/help appreciated. ...and if you know how to do this in Word,
perhaps you know how to do it in Excel too. Thanks in advance. - Jim
Redfield

There are filters to remove most of it, but not all of it. It's because
historically Office was intended for the intranet, not the internet and the
information was useful.

I guess you might be able to:
-- Copy/Paste the text to e-mail and set y our e-mail to send in Plain Text
mode. But you'll lose any text formatting.
-- Write it in Wordpad instead of Word; send that as an e-mail. Wordpad
has most of the common features of Word and text formatting, etc., but
without all the bloat Word adds. Save in .RTF format; then nearly any word
processor can read it. IFF Wordpad does everything you need.
-- Find a 3rd party stripper. I don't use them so I don't have links, but a
search engine will find them.
-- Look at the results of Word's own filters; see if the data is worth
worrying about.

HTH,

Twayne

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You'll find the main built-in facility for that at

Office Button->Prepare->Inspect Document

Whether it will do everything you need is another question (but if you
do have programmer support, AIUI it is possible to extend the Inspector
with your own specialised stuff, but I don't know how difficult that
might be).
Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Jay Freedman]

As Peter says, there is a built-in Document Inspector that will remove
all "personally identifiable" information, comments and tracked
changes, macro code, etc. See
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100375931033.aspx.

Another alternative -- again, built into Word and Excel 2007 -- is to
save the document as a PDF file. Unlike the image you described, a PDF
is searchable, can be copied from, and is a commonly accepted way of
distributing information.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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