Hidden Edit log

[Plumer]

Hello everyone,

I have become aware that Word maintains a log of the last
10 edits. The log is not available to the user. Can anyone
tell me how I can get access to that log?

Many thanks
Plumer

 

[Helmut Weber]

Hi Plumer.
Dim oRcn As RecentFile
For Each oRcn In Application.RecentFiles
MsgBox oRcn.Name
Next
Greetings from Bavaria, Germany
Helmut Weber
"red.sys" & chr(64) & "t-online.de"
Word XP, Win 98

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Plumer

I don't know where you "became aware" of what you state, but it's a
bit off the mark. Depending on what you mean by "edits", there are
several possibilities, although none of them are "maintained" to the
extent of 10.

- As Helmut noted, there is the list of recently used documents in
Application.RecentFiles. This collection has at most 9 entries, as set
by the user in Tools > Options > General.

- Word maintains a list of the locations of the three most recent
editing operations (insertions, deletions, format changes) among all
open documents. Use the Application.GoBack method to visit each of
these locations in turn.

- The ActiveDocument.Undo method works from a buffer that's
theoretically limited only by available memory (although various
versions of Word display erratic behavior when the buffer gets "too
big", whatever that means). There is no way to access individual items
in the buffer without working your way back in sequence. Further,
there are actions that aren't represented in the Undo buffer.

Another question: If the "log" you have in mind actually exists, what
do you mean by "get access to" it? What do you want to do?

 

[Plumer]

Hi Jay

Thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay in mine. In
the meantime I have discovered a bit more about
this 'thing'. This started as an article in a local
magazine which talked about material that Word documents
carry around with them that most people don't know about --
personal infomation and revisions and maybe other stuff.
I know about the personal information but the other
material referred to was of great interest since document
discovery (in a legal sense) is germane to my business and
I am keen to understand the inner workings so that I can
know what I'm giving to someone electronically.
The "getting at it' was wondering if there is some
function in VB that deletes whatever it is.

Anyway in the meantime I found this site:
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/strikeout/ which gives some
examples of retained material that later come back to
haunt the author. From looking at this it appears that
the 'hidden material' is/are copies of the document stored
a versions. If the "Save version on close" option is on
copies are saved and they pile up and perhaps for many
people this is something happens without their knowledge
(system admin turns it on) and they're not even aware that
the stuff is there when they send it out as an attachment
to an email.

I think that probably the limit of it. Not so sinister
after all.

Plumer

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Plumer

That's completely different from the way I understood your first post.
Here's a series of references to information about "hidden" data in Word
documents:

How to Minimize Metadata in Word
WD97:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=223790
WD2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=237361
WD2002:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290945

Remove Hidden Data add-in for Office 2003 and Office XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=834427

 

[Plumer]

Good morning Jay

Many thanks for the URLs -- the MS sites deal with this
pretty comprehensively. Working through the Word 2002 site
should solve the problem (to the extent that it is a
problem).

Thanks again
Plumer

 

[Bob S]

I don't know where you "became aware" of what you state, but it's a
bit off the mark. Depending on what you mean by "edits", there are
several possibilities, although none of them are "maintained" to the
extent of 10.

I am not so sure that he is off the mark. Every Word document
apparently stores the user names of the last ten people to edit the
document, and the file names that it was stored to. It does this even
if the change tracking feature is off.

Word 97 documents contain a GUID that includes among other things an
encoded version of the computer's MAC address. This was supposedly
removed in Word 2000.

There may be more stuff hiding in there. There is no reason to believe
that Microsoft has told us everything.

Naturally all of these little bits of potentially-traceable
information are of great concern to virus writers, and to other more
legitimate privacy advocates.

See http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm (involving a
Word 97 document).

Bob S

 

[Jay Freedman]

Thanks, Bob. We did settle this question about a week ago, and that is
indeed one of the items Plumer was interested in. Initially I misunderstood
what he meant by "edits".

 

[Gordo]

Hi Jay,

I have searched everywhere for a way to delete revison information from electronic vrsions of Word 2003 documents. You pointed me to the solution. Thanks.