Privacy concerns: read this if you share MS Word docs with others (editors, etc)

[Altissimus]

MS Word: File, info, and on the right under 'Related People' there may or may not be an 'Author' listed, depending on how your Word is set up.

If your name is there, and you don't want it to be, then click "Inspect Document", and again from the drop down of three items, click 'inspect' at the bottom, then click 'remove all' on the 'Document Properties and Personal Information'.

Special thanks to Microsoft for sneaking that data in there.

To change it permanently:

1. Press the Windows key + r on the keyboard, type netplwiz then press enter.
2. In the User Account window, highlight your account on the list, then click Properties.
3. Under the General tab, change the name in the "Full name" section.
4. Once done, click Apply, then Ok.

 

[lc69hunter]

I still use WordPerfect, and if you know what you are doing, you can delete metadata pretty easily.

The downside of using WP here is that I must save it as an RTF file

 

[Duleigh]

There's a quicker and easier way

Click File, then Info and on the info page click Check for Issues. That will give you a drop-down with three options, click on Inspect Document and it checks for almost everything:

• Comments, Revisions and Versions
• Document properties and personal information
• Task Pane add-ins
• Embedded documents
• Macros, forms, and ActiveX Controls
• Collapsed Headings
• Custom XML Data
• Headers, Footers, and Watermarks
• Invisable Content
• Hidden Text

The majority of this stuff cannot be seen and some may cause a rejection when submitting to lit. In fact the Inspect Document Button clearly says "Before publishing this file, be aware that it contains document properties and Author's Name."

Inspect Document is a great tool to use.

 

[MetaBob]

MS Word: File, info, and on the right under 'Related People' there may or may not be an 'Author' listed, depending on how your Word is set up.

If your name is there, and you don't want it to be, then click "Inspect Document", and again from the drop down of three items, click 'inspect' at the bottom, then click 'remove all' on the 'Document Properties and Personal Information'.

Special thanks to Microsoft for sneaking that data in there.

To change it permanently:

1. Press the Windows key + r on the keyboard, type netplwiz then press enter.
2. In the User Account window, highlight your account on the list, then click Properties.
3. Under the General tab, change the name in the "Full name" section.
4. Once done, click Apply, then Ok.

Yet more reasons I don't use MS Word unless absolutely necessary:

Wanna get caught embezzling because the fraudulent invoices you wrote using MS Word show who you really are?:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...steals-6-million-busted-by-word-doc-metadata/

 

[SyleusSnow]

As Duleigh says, the best way to get rid of it is to use MS Word's inspect document feature. Since I never trust Word, sometimes I'll also open it in LibreOffice and pick File > Properties to see what's still in there, then use "reset properties" to clear it out.

You can prevent your real name from getting inserting in the first place in MS Word by going to File > Options > General, and in the blanks for User name and Initials put in something meaningless (I use "Hack Writer"). Then check "Always use these values regardless of sign-in to office". New documents and the attributions in comments and revisions will then get that name and initials.

Metadata like this gets embedded in lots of file formats - images, audio, you name it. An excellent free tool that shows metadata in just about every file format in existence is ExifTool.

Using it is a little weird, though: for Windows, download via the link for Windows Executable and extract the file inside the Zip to your Windows desktop. Do not change the filename. Then drag a file you want to check (MS office, a picture, almost anything) onto the camel icon on the desktop.