Whenever creating, opening, or saving a document in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 97, 2000, and 2002, the document may contain information that you may not want to share with others if 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 Office documents. Some metadata is readily accessible through the user interface of each Office program. Other metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as opening a document in a low-level, binary file editor. Here’s how to cut down on this automatically-generated metadata that’s generated.
this freeware removes some metadata: havent used it yet, its from Javacool the makers of spyware blaster.
Technical, I could not get the article to display…the MS Knowledge base screen was there but it was blank :o
this happens very frequently when I try and access that site…any suggestions?
thank you!
cojo
Maybe because your language is English and the Microsoft site too ;D (joke)
I cannot imagine that, anyway I’ll post bellow the text from that article:
How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Office Documents
This article was previously published under Q223396
SUMMARY
Whenever you create, open, or save a document in any of the programs listed at the beginning of this article, the document may contain information that you may not want to share with others if 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 Office documents.
Some metadata is readily accessible through the user interface of each Office program. Other metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as 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 or cells
Personalized views
Comments
MORE INFORMATION
How to Remove Metadata from Your Documents
For additional information about removing metadata from your documents, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
290945 WD2002: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Word Documents
223789 XL:How to Minimize Metadata in Excel Workbooks
314800 PPT2002: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations
237361 WD2000: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Word Documents
314797 PPT2000: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations
223793 PPT97: How to Minimize Metadata in PowerPoint Presentations
223790 WD97: How to Minimize Metadata in Word Documents
General Suggestions About Security
To increase the level of security in your computing environment, review the following suggestions:
When you are not working at your computer, secure your computer with a password-protected screen saver, a power-on password, or the Windows NT Lock Workstation command.
If your computer has any shared folders, make sure you apply passwords to the folders, so that only authorized users can access your shares. For better security, use user-level access control, so that you can control exactly who can access your computer’s shares.
When you delete a file, empty the Recycle Bin immediately. You may want to consider using a utility that completely erases or overwrites files when they are deleted.
When you back up your data, store the backup files in a secure location, such as a safe, a security deposit box, or a locked cabinet. Store one copy of your backups at a secure off-site location in case your primary location becomes unusable.
Important documents should be password-protected to ensure that only authorized users can open them. Your passwords should be stored in a secure, separate location.
IMPORTANT: If you forget a password, there is no way to recover the contents of a password-protected document.
Do not distribute documents in electronic form. Instead, print them and distribute them. Do not use identifying elements, such as distinctive fonts, watermarks, logos, or special paper, unless necessary, for example, for a presentation.
E-mail is not anonymous. Do not send a document by e-mail if you are concerned about your identity being attached in any way to the document.
Do not send a document over the Internet by using either HTTP or FTP protocols. Information sent across these protocols is sent in “clear text”. This means that it is technically possible (however unlikely) for the information to be intercepted.
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Excel 2002
Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
Microsoft Word 2002
Microsoft Excel 2000
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000
Microsoft Word 2000
Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows
Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
One of my ‘biggest’ post for the envy of techie ;D
Wow, Technical! you are good!!
thank you,
cojo
I liked the joke 
CoJo,
Problems at Microsoft’s site may be the result of security settings in Internet Explorer being set too restrictively. However, this happens occasionally to me too; their servers appear to have conkus-on-the-bonkus, which clears up on its own after a while.
Regards,
Hornus
Which settings and which restrictions? Cookies, ActiveX…
Could you post something more? 
Technical,
Enable the following:
dowloading of signed ActiveX controls
running ActiveX controls and plug-ins
scripting ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting
active scripting
Rather than do this globally, add the Microsoft web sites (communities.microsoft.com, msdn.microsoft.com, search.communities.microsoft.com, search.microsoft.com, support.microsoft.com, v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com, windowsupdate.microsoft.com, and, www.Microsoft.com ) to the Trusted Zone and enable these options for the zone. I can’t say with certainty that all these settings, or even which combinations, are required for a given site; the list is the result of a cumulative effort, adding another whenever I encountered a problem.
Regards,
Hornus
Thanks Hornus but it’s quite strange to ‘open’ our privacy to Microsoft that way. Why we have to ‘trust’ in all of their sites? ;D It’s really strange that a Microsoft user (like Cojo) could not access the Microsoft site :
Technical,
I hear you, but they wrote the OS, so if they’re intent on invading your privacy, there are far more surreptitious ways to do it. I’m sure they have the expertise to do an end-runaround a firewall for example (personal firewall at least). Besides, there are enough conspiracy theorists monitoring communications with packet sniffers, that it wouldn’t remain a secret for long. Worrying about it is like pissing in the wind.
You don’t necessarily have to open your system up to them on all the sites I listed, they are just the ones that I’ve noticed problems with when the security settings were too restrictive. Said problems went away when I allowed certain things to happen.
I judge the risk to be low and the value of the information to be high. Aside from that, I trust SurfinGuard Pro to alert me to any shenanigans from scripts and ActiveX Controls.
Tight security settings may or may not be the cause of CoJo’s problems at MS. As I mentioned in my original response to her, sometimes their servers just flake out, and their web pages don’t display or perform properly. Then later, everything is working fine.
Regards,
Hornus
Ok, we both agree, that was just a ‘way of speaking’…
Again, you may be right… Not everything is deterministic in your web world ;D
I have told to Cojo this answer before: try again, sometimes, turning off the computer and booting solves a lot of headaches… For instance, today the update of VPS do not work for me at the first time but I won’t be angry about this… Maybe tomorrow will be better. Easy going. 