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Emily Cotlier <<...prepares documents in MS Word 2000. Recently, we sent a
document on CD-ROM to a client... in
read-only format, with all the Track Changes functions turned off... When
our client got it, they opened it--and saw the change history, what it had
said before we customised it for them, queries to developers, et cetera...
How can I save a Word document so that the Track Changes history cannot be
turned on again? And are there any other hints for
maintaining Word document confidentiality?>>
Unless they've changed the functionality in Word2000, you can't protect a
document in Word. Once it's open, the reader can do "save as", and the
document's suddenlty theirs to mangle at will. Even PDF isn't completely
secure; there are text extractors out there (I used to have a URL for a
whole suite of such utilities, but you could probably find this particular
one on PDFzone.com) that will let you extract just about any text from any
standard "protected" file, barring really secure stuff like PGP or
public-key encryption.
The track changes problem should be easy to solve. Before you send the file
out, use Tools-->Track changes-->Accept or reject. Choose "accept all"; if
there aren't any revisions to accept, Word will tell you that, and all
you've done is waste about 10 seconds; if there are changes you've forgotten
about (e.g., because of the view settings), then you've saved yourself a lot
of embarassment. Then do a "Save as". That should clean out any and all
accumulated junk, including revision history. One other thing to watch for:
Under the File menu, you'll also see a command labeled "Versions..." that
may be causing the problem; I've never used it (don't particularly trust
it), and can't provide details, but more or less what it does is save old
versions of the document (between saves) in the same file. Hopefully one of
our Word experts can provide more details, but if someone has enabled this
function, you may have to disable this function (if it's enabled) or delete
any old versions before you do the Save as.
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
