C
Chit
What is the best method to prevent people from viewing changes
previously made to a document?
Thanks,
chit
previously made to a document?
Thanks,
chit
E
Elliott Roper
Chit said:
Hmm, depends how evil you think they might be ;-)
If you have any track changes activity, make a copy and accept all the
changes. Work with the copy.
Save as RTF
Open the RTF and save as a Word Document.
Don't forget to save the document in an innocent sounding path
(I once foiled a consultant's best efforts to hide his client's ID by
inspecting the name of the directory he had saved his document in among
the rubbish that his Word doc carried around with it)
Open the document in BBEdit, Emacs, or some other pure text editor and
scan it for the stuff you might not want them to see.
If RTF fails, try saving your document as html, edit the html in BBEdit
or whatever, deleting any dodginess, and open and re-save it in Word.
(expect armloads of torment and grief if you are not html-savvy)
OR, if you would prefer that the document not be edited by the
recipient, print as PDF, then send them that.
I do the latter anyway, sending it along with the sanitised Word, since
you cannot trust the recipient's computer to have the same fonts
(despite similar names) and have a printer with the same margins as
your printer has.
If you are *really* paranoid, print the document, scan it back in, and
send 'em the gifs or post the paper the old-fashioned way.
This is not Word's strong suit.
M
mmmmark
Elliott Roper said:
The PC version recently got a "purge tool" that cleanses the document of all
previous changes that lurk beneath the surface. Old documents get very
large (and very unstable, IMHO) when track changes is used even minimally.
I thought that RTF could still have 'hidden text' as an attribute, so are
you SURE that method works? If it does, that may be a good bet.
Regards,
Mark
E
Elliott Roper
mmmmark said:
Heh! No I'm not completely sure. That's why I hedged the advice big
time. ;-)
I *think* a simple save-as with the copy of all but the last paragraph
mark into a new document might help too.
Whatever you do, it is worth checking with a proper text editor or even
a hex dump thingy.
M
mmmmark
Elliott Roper said:
Fair enough. Bottom line is that you can't be too careful with
company-sensitive information. I personally favor protected PDFs as my
destination format.
-Mark
J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
OK, I guess I should weigh in on this one...
The PC tool you mention is built-in to Word 2004. Check the
Preferences>Security>Remove personally identifiable information..." box on
each document you want treated this way.
Note that if you do, you will remove the attribution from tracked changes
and from comments.
Saving to RTF does not remove most of this information. What it "does" do
is remove any "stranded" or "corrupted" information. If a Word document
suffers internal damage, Word leaves the material it cannot understand in
the file, just in case it is not in fact "corrupted", but instead valuable
information to a different application. Saving out to RTF removes that.
As Elliot mentions, saving to HTML is a better bet. HTML is not capable of
encoding most of the information in question, so it is automatically
discarded. The material that isn't is encoded in plain text in auxiliary
files which you can read, edit, and remove if you wish.
Saving to plain text works perfectly, too
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
The PC tool you mention is built-in to Word 2004. Check the
Preferences>Security>Remove personally identifiable information..." box on
each document you want treated this way.
Note that if you do, you will remove the attribution from tracked changes
and from comments.
Saving to RTF does not remove most of this information. What it "does" do
is remove any "stranded" or "corrupted" information. If a Word document
suffers internal damage, Word leaves the material it cannot understand in
the file, just in case it is not in fact "corrupted", but instead valuable
information to a different application. Saving out to RTF removes that.
As Elliot mentions, saving to HTML is a better bet. HTML is not capable of
encoding most of the information in question, so it is automatically
discarded. The material that isn't is encoded in plain text in auxiliary
files which you can read, edit, and remove if you wish.
Saving to plain text works perfectly, too
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
M
mmmmark
John,
That is great news about the the "remove personally indentifiable info" tool
being built into 2004. I see that is available in PC Word 2003 as well.
But...doesn't this only remove your "name id" thought and not the tracked
changes themselves.
What we often need to do (on the PC side) is strip ALL TRACKED CHANGES that
live as artifacts in the documents we distribute. If we do not, we could be
potentially embarrassed--or worse, sued--for what is left behind. This is
one reason that several of my lawyer friends will NOT use Word, and insist
on using orphaned Wordperfect distros.
Again, that is why I use protected PDF for final output.
-Mark
That is great news about the the "remove personally indentifiable info" tool
being built into 2004. I see that is available in PC Word 2003 as well.
But...doesn't this only remove your "name id" thought and not the tracked
changes themselves.
What we often need to do (on the PC side) is strip ALL TRACKED CHANGES that
live as artifacts in the documents we distribute. If we do not, we could be
potentially embarrassed--or worse, sued--for what is left behind. This is
one reason that several of my lawyer friends will NOT use Word, and insist
on using orphaned Wordperfect distros.
Again, that is why I use protected PDF for final output.
-Mark
M
Matt Centurión [MSFT]
As John mentioned, the feature (available in the Security dialog of Word
2004) will simply change the names/identities of those making changes to
"author". If you don't want any of the changes kept then simply "Reject All
Changes" or "Accept All Changes" before you save.
You could make this happen on each save by modifying the Document.Save event
macro in the Normal template.
Matt
MacWord Testing
MacBU - Microsoft
--
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Please do not send email directly to this e-mail address. It is for
newsgroup purposes only.
Find out everything about Microsoft Mac Newsgroups at:
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Check out product updates and news & info at:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac
2004) will simply change the names/identities of those making changes to
"author". If you don't want any of the changes kept then simply "Reject All
Changes" or "Accept All Changes" before you save.
You could make this happen on each save by modifying the Document.Save event
macro in the Normal template.
Matt
MacWord Testing
MacBU - Microsoft
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this e-mail address. It is for
newsgroup purposes only.
Find out everything about Microsoft Mac Newsgroups at:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups
Check out product updates and news & info at:
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J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Yes. What Matt said
In Word 2003 and Word 2004, there's a "Warn before saving a document that
contains tracked changes." in Preferences.
That will alert you if you are about to save tracked changes.
As Matt said, it's a simply matter to change the Document OnSave event to
remove tracked changes, but it's hard to get this to work in a production
environment. Most of the time, the reason people put tracked changes into a
document is because they want to save them and send them to someone else.
Basically, I think you will solve this problem by telling people that
Information Security is THEIR responsibility, and that when they are dealing
with large volumes of high-value information of a sensitive nature, it is
essential that they acquire a good knowledge of their tools of trade. And
that means they need to learn in detail how to use Tracked Changes in Word
If they don't, tell them that next time their toilet springs a leak, you
will send them a plumber who can't use a blow-torch...
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
In Word 2003 and Word 2004, there's a "Warn before saving a document that
contains tracked changes." in Preferences.
That will alert you if you are about to save tracked changes.
As Matt said, it's a simply matter to change the Document OnSave event to
remove tracked changes, but it's hard to get this to work in a production
environment. Most of the time, the reason people put tracked changes into a
document is because they want to save them and send them to someone else.
Basically, I think you will solve this problem by telling people that
Information Security is THEIR responsibility, and that when they are dealing
with large volumes of high-value information of a sensitive nature, it is
essential that they acquire a good knowledge of their tools of trade. And
that means they need to learn in detail how to use Tracked Changes in Word
If they don't, tell them that next time their toilet springs a leak, you
will send them a plumber who can't use a blow-torch...
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
M
mmmmark
John, you are right on about the practical nature of how "track changes" is
usually used. In our engineering workflow, engineers frequently markup
everything from technical specs to O&M manuals by tracking changes. What
often happens is that our docs department has to retype all these changes to
avoid "accepting" these changes. If they accept them, not only does the
file size balloon, but the tracking changes are still visible to any crafty
soul who cares to meddle in a document "under the hood". These tidbits of
hidden information can create legal liability.
Microsoft's implementation is frustrating in this regard because it seems so
convenient (and tempting) for the engineers to use, but creates another
issue for our docs department. MS needs to create the "purge tool" for the
Mac that mirrors the one they released for the PC this year.
Tracking changes is useful only as a visual markup tool to show changes, but
certainly not as useful as it could be. I just want to challenge MS to
continue to move in a useful, productive direction.
-Mark
usually used. In our engineering workflow, engineers frequently markup
everything from technical specs to O&M manuals by tracking changes. What
often happens is that our docs department has to retype all these changes to
avoid "accepting" these changes. If they accept them, not only does the
file size balloon, but the tracking changes are still visible to any crafty
soul who cares to meddle in a document "under the hood". These tidbits of
hidden information can create legal liability.
Microsoft's implementation is frustrating in this regard because it seems so
convenient (and tempting) for the engineers to use, but creates another
issue for our docs department. MS needs to create the "purge tool" for the
Mac that mirrors the one they released for the PC this year.
Tracking changes is useful only as a visual markup tool to show changes, but
certainly not as useful as it could be. I just want to challenge MS to
continue to move in a useful, productive direction.
-Mark
J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Hi Mark:
I think I better have a serious word to your Doc department
If anyone should know what they are doing with Tracked Changes, the
Documentation Department should: they should live by them.
Yet if they are getting the problems you describe, there is something
obviously very wrong with what they are doing, because Tracked Changes can't
produce those symptoms if used correctly
Personally, I live by tracked changes. And I know that if they are
correctly Accepted, they're gone! Forever!
However, I routinely do a final "Accept All". I first go through the
document and selectively accept/reject. But then, before finalising the
document, I do an Accept All, just in case I missed any.
I ensure Allow Fast Saves and Versions and Tracked Changes are all turned
off, then Accept All, then perform a full save (e.g. A Save As).
After that, there ain't no tracked changes left in the document. Guarantee
it
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
I think I better have a serious word to your Doc department
If anyone should know what they are doing with Tracked Changes, the
Documentation Department should: they should live by them.
Yet if they are getting the problems you describe, there is something
obviously very wrong with what they are doing, because Tracked Changes can't
produce those symptoms if used correctly
Personally, I live by tracked changes. And I know that if they are
correctly Accepted, they're gone! Forever!
However, I routinely do a final "Accept All". I first go through the
document and selectively accept/reject. But then, before finalising the
document, I do an Accept All, just in case I missed any.
I ensure Allow Fast Saves and Versions and Tracked Changes are all turned
off, then Accept All, then perform a full save (e.g. A Save As).
After that, there ain't no tracked changes left in the document. Guarantee
it
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
M
mmmmark
John,
The tool referenced here attempts to remedy the inherent risk of tracked
changes and other personally identifying information lurking hidden in
Office files. Unfortunately, nothing similar is available for the Mac
versions.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;834427
I can't find the article at the moment, but there was an embarrassing
incident a couple of years ago whereby Microsoft itself was "bit" by old
tracked changes left lurking in documents made by their own lawyers. These
are not visible within Word after acceptance, but were found by a
resourceful individual with a text editor. We routinely see the filesize
increases that proves this phenomenon.
-Mark
The tool referenced here attempts to remedy the inherent risk of tracked
changes and other personally identifying information lurking hidden in
Office files. Unfortunately, nothing similar is available for the Mac
versions.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;834427
I can't find the article at the moment, but there was an embarrassing
incident a couple of years ago whereby Microsoft itself was "bit" by old
tracked changes left lurking in documents made by their own lawyers. These
are not visible within Word after acceptance, but were found by a
resourceful individual with a text editor. We routinely see the filesize
increases that proves this phenomenon.
-Mark
J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Hi Mark:
Yes, it is... It's built-in to Word 2004.
You are referring to "Allow fast saves" or "Versions". A Documentation
Department (or anyone who knows Word well) would routinely turn these two
off. If you enable "Always make backup copy" in Preferences, you
automatically disable Fast Saves: problem solved.
Then I am sorry, but I need to have a chat to your Doco department File
bloat is always (note: "always") caused by mishandling documents. There can
be a variety of causes, including mishandling tracked changes. But it's a
user training problem, not a Word problem.
I had a document today that had been encrusted with crud just that way. I
gave it a quick spring-clean and knocked the file size down to just over two
megs from well over eight...
So: If you want a solution to this, let's start discussing how to handle
large documents that are frequently edited.
Begin by wandering around all of your user machines and checking:
1) Fast Saves is OFF.
2) Always Make Backup is ON
3) Versions is OFF
4) Tracked Changes is OFF
5) Highlight changes on screen is ON (this is the one that usually catches
inexperienced users: they turn off the display of changes on screen, instead
of turning off the collecting of tracked changes).
6) Default Save Format is set to Word Document (and not any of the
"earlier" or "compatible" versions. Users who have set Word to save in RTF
will get horrendous file-bloat.
7) Users know NOT to "crop" pictures in Word. The "cropping" that users
usually do in Word simply restricts the amount of a picture that is printed,
not the amount actually stored in the document.
Come back when you've done those and we'll give you some more: but those are
the most usual sources of bother
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
Yes, it is... It's built-in to Word 2004.
You are referring to "Allow fast saves" or "Versions". A Documentation
Department (or anyone who knows Word well) would routinely turn these two
off. If you enable "Always make backup copy" in Preferences, you
automatically disable Fast Saves: problem solved.
Then I am sorry, but I need to have a chat to your Doco department
Filebloat is always (note: "always") caused by mishandling documents. There can
be a variety of causes, including mishandling tracked changes. But it's a
user training problem, not a Word problem.
I had a document today that had been encrusted with crud just that way. I
gave it a quick spring-clean and knocked the file size down to just over two
megs from well over eight...
So: If you want a solution to this, let's start discussing how to handle
large documents that are frequently edited.
Begin by wandering around all of your user machines and checking:
1) Fast Saves is OFF.
2) Always Make Backup is ON
3) Versions is OFF
4) Tracked Changes is OFF
5) Highlight changes on screen is ON (this is the one that usually catches
inexperienced users: they turn off the display of changes on screen, instead
of turning off the collecting of tracked changes).
6) Default Save Format is set to Word Document (and not any of the
"earlier" or "compatible" versions. Users who have set Word to save in RTF
will get horrendous file-bloat.
7) Users know NOT to "crop" pictures in Word. The "cropping" that users
usually do in Word simply restricts the amount of a picture that is printed,
not the amount actually stored in the document.
Come back when you've done those and we'll give you some more: but those are
the most usual sources of bother
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
M
mmmmark
John, I appreciate your thoughtful, comprehensive checklist and any newbie
would do well to follow those ideals. Problem is, I've been at this 8 years
and speak from experience. We do all of those things religiously--except #7
occasionally has to be reminded.
The key difference is that we are using Office 2003 in 80% of cases and only
are using 2004 in one in-house computer and in several work-at-home
situations and one coordinating agency. Most of the situation I describe is
manifested in 2003. I'd love to see some proof of the equivalent to "hidden
data removal tool" being built in to 2004. I am certainly NOT referring to
fast saves or versions when I speak of file bloat. This problem is very
real on 2000, 2002 and 2003 on the PC side.
-Mark
would do well to follow those ideals. Problem is, I've been at this 8 years
and speak from experience. We do all of those things religiously--except #7
occasionally has to be reminded.
The key difference is that we are using Office 2003 in 80% of cases and only
are using 2004 in one in-house computer and in several work-at-home
situations and one coordinating agency. Most of the situation I describe is
manifested in 2003. I'd love to see some proof of the equivalent to "hidden
data removal tool" being built in to 2004. I am certainly NOT referring to
fast saves or versions when I speak of file bloat. This problem is very
real on 2000, 2002 and 2003 on the PC side.
-Mark
J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Hi Mark:
OK, so you've been at it for eight years and YOU know what you are doing. I
have been at this for something like 30 years, so hopefully I know a few
things too. (Still working on keeping my mouth shut at times, but
'progress, not perfection' ...)
But somewhere in your organization, users using the products I use each day
(Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004...) are getting results I am not seeing.
Sorry for the "basic" checklist. But as you well know, we need to ensure
those items are covered off before we begin looking for stranded RTF, which
is the other hardy perennial.
The Metadata Removal Tool won't solve file bloat. The amount of data it
removes is trivial: you won't see it in the file size report because there's
way less than a kilobyte of it, even in a very big document. All the tool
does is blank (not remove) the entries in a few property tables int he file
header.
Switching documents back and forth from Mac to PC "could" result in file
bloat of the documents contained lots of pictures and the pictures were
being edited. WinWord creates a BMP or WMF preview of each pic for screen
display purposes. To save processing time, it stores it in the document for
reuse. Mac Word does the same, but stores it as a PICT. So you can end up
with each picture stored three times in the document.
But the bloat can happen if the picture is then edited. The machine doing
the editing updates its display preview, but not the Mac's. When the Mac
gets the document back, the picture is "different", it produces a new
display preview, but leaves the old one embedded in the documenbt because
it's no longer linked.
RTF can do the same thing. If you have users importing RTF text (and if
they are generating Windows Help, they will be...) you can get large lumps
of RTF stranded in a document when you change platforms. An RTF application
will pass through code it can't understand. If the reason it couldn't
understand it is because it is corrupted, the RTF application will just
leave it there and ignore it, instead of attempting to clean it up.
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
OK, so you've been at it for eight years and YOU know what you are doing. I
have been at this for something like 30 years, so hopefully I know a few
things too. (Still working on keeping my mouth shut at times, but
'progress, not perfection' ...)
But somewhere in your organization, users using the products I use each day
(Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004...) are getting results I am not seeing.
Sorry for the "basic" checklist. But as you well know, we need to ensure
those items are covered off before we begin looking for stranded RTF, which
is the other hardy perennial.
The Metadata Removal Tool won't solve file bloat. The amount of data it
removes is trivial: you won't see it in the file size report because there's
way less than a kilobyte of it, even in a very big document. All the tool
does is blank (not remove) the entries in a few property tables int he file
header.
Switching documents back and forth from Mac to PC "could" result in file
bloat of the documents contained lots of pictures and the pictures were
being edited. WinWord creates a BMP or WMF preview of each pic for screen
display purposes. To save processing time, it stores it in the document for
reuse. Mac Word does the same, but stores it as a PICT. So you can end up
with each picture stored three times in the document.
But the bloat can happen if the picture is then edited. The machine doing
the editing updates its display preview, but not the Mac's. When the Mac
gets the document back, the picture is "different", it produces a new
display preview, but leaves the old one embedded in the documenbt because
it's no longer linked.
RTF can do the same thing. If you have users importing RTF text (and if
they are generating Windows Help, they will be...) you can get large lumps
of RTF stranded in a document when you change platforms. An RTF application
will pass through code it can't understand. If the reason it couldn't
understand it is because it is corrupted, the RTF application will just
leave it there and ignore it, instead of attempting to clean it up.
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410