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  • Find and remove metadata (hidden information) in your legal documents

    From Microsoft:

    This article describes various methods that you can use to minimize the metadata in your Microsoft Word documents.

    Whenever you create, open, or save a document in Word 2002, the document may contain content that you may not want to share with others when you distribute the document electronically. This information is known as metadata. Metadata is used for a variety of purposes to enhance the editing, viewing, filing, and retrieval of Microsoft Office documents.

    Some metadata is easily accessible through the Word user interface. Other metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as by opening a document in a low-level binary file editor.

    The following are some examples of metadata that may be stored in your documents:
    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
    Other file properties and summary information
    Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects
    The names of previous document authors
    Document revisions
    Document versions
    Template information
    Hidden text
    Comments
    Metadata is created in a variety of ways in Word documents. As a result, there is no single method to remove all such content from your documents. The following sections describe areas where metadata may be saved in Word documents.

    How to Automatically Remove Personal Information When You Save

    You can now automatically remove personal information from a Word document when you save the document. To turn this option on, follow these steps:
    On the Tools menu, click Options.
    On the Security tab, click to select the Remove personal information from this file on save check box under Privacy options, and then click OK.


    How to Manually Remove Your User Name from Your Documents

    To view or change your user name, follow these steps:
    On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the User Information tab.

    The following text boxes appear:

    Name
    Initials
    Mailing Address
    If you do not want any of this information to appear in your documents, enter non-identifying strings or spaces in the appropriate text boxes, and then click OK to accept the changes.

    Note: Any new documents that you create will contain this information, instead of the default values that are entered when you install Office. However, existing documents may already contain this information.



    How to Manually Remove Personal Summary Information

    When you create or save a document in Word, summary information may be saved in the document. There are several methods that you can use to access this information:
    Open the document. On the File menu, click Properties.

    The Summary, Statistics, Contents, and Custom tabs may all contain various properties such as your name, your manager's name, and your company name.
    In Microsoft Windows Explorer, right-click the document, and then click Properties.

    The tabs in the Properties dialog box may contain information.
    You can use a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro or other program code to read the properties shown in the Properties dialog box.
    To clear summary information from an existing document or template, follow these steps:
    Open the document or template.
    On the File menu, click Properties.
    On the Summary tab, click to clear the Author, Manager, Company, and any other text boxes that you do not want to distribute.
    On the Custom tab, delete any properties that contain information that you do not want to distribute.
    Click OK.

    On the File menu, click Save, and then click Close.
    After you complete these steps, the document will not contain summary properties.

    For More Information See:
    Microsoft support is here to help you with Microsoft products. Find how-to articles, videos, and training for Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365, Windows, Surface, and more.
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