Comments on: What’s hidden in your Word documents?

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:31:28 +0000

That symbol usually indicates divisions between cells in a table. Try pressing Ctrl+A and then right-click and see if you have a Table menu.

By: Tamara

Tamara — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:14:06 +0000

Can anyone tell me what the hidden code is that looks like a sun burst ( a circle with four little dots around it)? I cannot delete it and it appears to be some sort of section break because I cannot add any text to the space directly above it. I want to move or delete it. Do you know how to do that?

By: JC Helary

JC Helary — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:34:14 +0000

.rtf does retain some of the hidden information. Although opening such files in apps other than Word does not display them they are still here, at least for some of them.

By: William

William — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:04:48 +0000

On a slightly side- note – the Redaction tool for Word 2007 – it has dissapeared! Few a few weeks it was on downlaods.microsoft.com, then it was “page cannot be found”. I spent litterally 55 minutes on the phone to Microsoft (UK) to ask what was up “It’s still beta” came the response.. Well, yes, but it was there before!. Anywayw, the search results have now evaporated. It’s all over blogs, so I know i’m not inventing the previous existance!

By: Oops! Microsoft exposes hidden data in a Word document | Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise |

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:47:34 +0000

[...] other day I mentioned what happens when you don’t pay attention to potentially embarrassing data that might be buried in Word documents. So I was especially amused to find an example on Microsoft’s own [...]

By: Tomer

Tomer — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:01:41 +0000

Why not just save in .rtf format when sending the file out of the office? Not only does it NOT save such data, but it is also readable in all versions of word without any trouble (As .doc sometimes has in older versions)

By: Serdar

Serdar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:26:27 +0000

Actually, the output provider in question had reported that a number of other people who had submitted W2K7-created PDFs had similar problems. But, I am willing to believe it’s something on their end — since everyone else I’ve given such PDFs to have never had an issue.

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:15:40 +0000

Serdar,

I’ve made dozens of PDFs from Word 2007 using the XPS/PDF add-in, on at least four different machines. Never had a probl;em even once. So I don’t think your experience is typical, especially if it was a one-time glitch.

By: Serdar

Serdar — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:13:05 +0000

There were other reasons, but this is definitely one of the good ones.

However, the PDF export plugin for Word 2007 really leaves a lot to be desired. I created a document with it that I sent to an output facility, and it came back hopelessly munged. I then tried installing the free CutePDF virtual printer driver, and sent them the export from that. It worked perfectly.