Remove Hidden Data Add-in for Office 2003/XP

Microsoft offers a Remove Hidden Data Add-in that removes the metadata from Office files. With this add-in you can permanently remove hidden data and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint files.

You can run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on individual files from within your Office XP or Office 2003 application. Or, you can run Remove Hidden Data on multiple files at once from the command line. In either case, to run the tool you must have the application installed in which the document was created.

The Offrhdreadme.htm file included with the add-in includes a complete list of all of the types of data that the tool will help to remove. By default, you can locate this file in the \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Remove Hidden Data Tool\1033 directory in the drive where you installed the tool. If you installed the tool to a different directory, you can locate this file in the \1033 directory, a subdirectory of the add-in installation folder.

Important things to know:

– You should run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on files when you are ready to publish them. This is because some of the data that the tool removes is used by Office for collaboration features, such as Track Changes, Comments, and Send for Review.

– You should always save to a new file name, rather than overwrite the original file with the new document, in order to preserve a copy of the document containing the original data.

– The Remove Hidden Data add-in does not work with Information Rights Management-protected or digitally-signed files.

NOTE: This add-in is not compatible with the 2007 Office system. The Document Inspector feature in the 2007 Office system replaces this add-in. For more information see the Office 2007 Resource Kit content.