MS Office 2003/XP Add-in for Removing Hidden Data (Meta data)

Remove Hidden Data is an add-in to MS Office 2003 /XP that allows you to remove personal or hidden information (Meta data) from your Microsoft Office application. Meta data includes document properties and history - things you deleted from the documents, your name and initials, name of your computer, name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document, the name of previous author, hidden text, tracking comments, etc which are hidden in the document.

From a security standpoint you wouldn’t want to share these data with others (when you send these documents electronically). With this add-in you can permanently remove all these hidden data from MS Word 2003/XP, Excel 2003/XP, and PowerPoint 2003/XP files.

Download ‘Remove Hidden Data’ add-in from Microsoft and install it. After finishing your document, save it (preferably in a different file name). Open, for example Word, click ‘File’ menu and select ‘Remove hidden data’. Select the document for removing Meta data and follow the instruction.

[Alternatively, you can do it without the add-in, go to ‘Tools’ – ‘Options’ and click on ‘Security’ tab. Check the box ‘Remove personal information from this file on save’ and click OK to save]

The Remove Hidden Data add-in does not work with Information Rights Management-protected or digitally-signed files. This add-in is not compatible with the 2007 Office system. The Document Inspector feature in the 2007 Office system replaces this add-in. More details and download