<p><a href="#overview">Overview</a></p><p><a href="#system_requirements">System requirements</a></p><p><a href="#types_of_data">Types of data this add-in can
remove</a></p><p><a href="#known_issues">Known issues</a></p><p><a href="#basic_use">Basic use</a></p><p><a href="#command_line">Command line</a></p><p><a href="#log_file">Log file</a></p><p><a href="#remove_data">Using Remove Hidden Data with IRM</a></p><p><h3><a id="overview" name="overview">Overview</a></h3></p><p>When you distribute an Office document electronically, the document might
contain information that you do not want to share publicly, such as information
that allows you to collaborate on writing and editing the document, or hidden
information that can be used to track who worked on the document.</p><p>The Remove Hidden Data add-in is a tool that you can use to remove personal
or hidden information that might not be immediately apparent when you view the
document in the Microsoft Office application.</p><p>You can run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on individual files from within
the Office XP or Office System 2003 application. Or, you can run Remove Hidden
Data on multiple files from the command line. In either case, the application
that created the document must be installed in order for you to run the tool.</p><p><b class="bterm">Notes</b></p><p>You should run the Remove Hidden Data add-in on
files when you are ready to publish them. This is because some information removed by the tool is used by Office for collaboration features,
such as Track Changes, Comments, and Send for Review, and these collaboration features will not work after using the Remove Hidden Data add-in.</p><p>The Remove Hidden Data add-in is designed to
remove certain types of data from Office files permanently, automatically, and
without prompting. By default, the add-in will prompt you to save the file to a
new file name.</p><p>You should always save using a new file name,
rather than overwrite the original file with the new document, in order to
preserve a copy of the document containing the original data.</p><p>To change the language that the Remove Hidden
Data add-in uses, you will need to uninstall the add-in and then download a new copy of the Remove Hidden
Data add-in for that language. After the <b class="bterm">new</b> language add-in has been
installed, <b class="bterm">it will replace the original language version of the add-in</b>.
All copies of the Remove Hidden Data add-in, in any language, include an
English-language version to support the command-line tool.</p><p>This tool cannot remove hidden data from the following types of files:</p><ul><li>Documents using rights-management permissions</li><li>Protected documents</li><li>Digitally signed documents</li><li>Shared workbooks</li></ul><p>If you try to run this tool on a file that meets one or more of these conditions,
the tool will terminate operation and display an error message. The original
file is unchanged.</p><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="system_requirements" name="system_requirements">System requirements</a></h2></p><p>Supported Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows® XP SP1 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 or later, or Microsoft Windows Server 2003</p><p>This download works with the following Office applications:</p><ul><li>Microsoft Office Word 2003</li><li>Microsoft Office Excel 2003</li><li>Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003</li><li>Microsoft Word 2002, SP2 or later</li><li>Microsoft Excel 2002, SP2 or later</li><li>Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, SP2 or later</li></ul><p>You must have the application in which the document was created installed to
run the add-in. Also, the version of Office that you have must be the same or
newer than the version of the document on which you want to run the Remove
Hidden Data tool. For example, you can run the tool on an Office 2000 document
using Office 2003, but you cannot run the tool on an Office 2003 document using
Office XP.</p><p>Remove Hidden Data works with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and
PowerPoint presentations, as well as Web pages and single-file Web pages; created by Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It does not work with other
document formats.</p><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="types_of_data" name="types_of_data">Types of data this add-in can
remove</a></h2></p><p>The following types of data are removed automatically.</p><ul><li>Comments.</li><li>Previous authors and editors.</li><li>User name.</li><li>Personal summary information.</li><li>Revision marks. The tool accepts all revisions specified in the document. As a result, the contents of the document will correspond to the <b class="bterm">Final Showing Markup</b> view on the <b class="bterm">Reviewing</b> toolbar.</li><li>Deleted text. This data is removed automatically.</li><li>Versions.</li><li>VB Macros. Descriptions and comments are removed from the modules.</li><li>The ID number used to identify your document for the purpose of merging changes back into the original document.</li><li>Routing slips.</li><li>E-mail headers.</li><li>Scenario comments.</li><li>Unique identifiers (Office 97 documents only).</li></ul><p><b>Note</b>  The Remove Hidden Data tool also turns on the Remove Personal Information feature. For more information on this feature, please search for “Remove Personal Information” in the application Help.</p><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="known_issues" name="known_issues">Known issues</a></h2></p><ul><li>Excel: In Excel 2002, printer paths are not removed; however, they are removed in Excel 2003.</li><li>Excel: The link to a supporting external workbook may not be cleaned from an Excel single-file Web page.</li><li>If the Remove Hidden Data add-in shuts down unexpectedly, an empty Notepad window may appear and a log file may be left in your temporary directory. To close the Notepad window, press File, Exit in Notepad. To remove this log file, delete the contents of the temporary directory in your local settings folder.</li><li>If you close the Remove Hidden Data add-in before it is finished reviewing a document, one or more temporary files may be left in the destination directory. To remove these files, delete them from the destination directory.</li><li>Single-file Web pages that have been reviewed by this tool may contain the name of a randomly generated temporary file in the form file:///c:/<number>/. The number used in this name is based on the file name of the single-file web page and cannot be traced back to your computer.</li><li>Existing hidden random numbers, used to improve merge accuracy and stored in Word files, are not removed.</li><li>When run from the command line, the Remove Hidden Data add-in does not work on XML documents created in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
</li></ul><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="basic_use" name="basic_use">Basic use</a></h2></p><p>After you install the Remove Hidden Data add-in, open the document you want to review, then, on the <b class="bterm">File</b> menu, click <b class="bterm">Remove Hidden Data</b>.</p><p><b>Note</b>  If you do not see the <b class="bterm">Remove Hidden Data</b> command on the <b class="bterm">File</b> menu, check the following:</p><ol><li>On the <b class="bterm">Tools</b> menu, click <b class="bterm">Options</b>, and then click the <b class="bterm">Security</b> tab.</li><li>Under <b class="bterm">Macro Security</b>, click <b class="bterm">Macro Security</b>.</li><li>Click the <b class="bterm">Trusted Publishers</b> tab.</li><li>Select the <b class="bterm">Trust all installed add-ins and templates</b> check box, and then click <b class="bterm">OK</b> twice.</li></ol><p>After you specify the file name, the tool will remove specified hidden data automatically. See <a href="#types_of_data">Types of data this add-in can remove</a> for more information.</p><p><b class="bterm">Notes</b></p><p>You should always save to a new file name, rather than overwrite the original file with the new document, in order to preserve a copy of the document containing the original data.</p><p>The Remove Hidden Data add-in does not support saving documents as templates.</p><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="command_line" name="command_line">Command line</a></h2></p><p>To run the Remove Hidden Data add-in from the command-line, do the following:
</p><ol><li>Close all instances of Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint before launching the command-line tool.</li><li>On the <b class="bterm">Start</b> menu, click <b class="bterm">Run</b>.
</li><li>Type "cmd" (without the quotes), and then press ENTER.
</li><li>Switch to the directory that contains the OFFRHD.EXE file. By default, this is the directory where you installed the Remove Hidden Data add-in.</li><li>At the command prompt, type the syntax for the task you want to perform.</li></ol><p><b class="bterm">Notes</b></p><p>Although your document application is not visible, it is running in the background. If the application launches a dialog box, the Remove Hidden Data add-in will pause until the dialog box is closed. If the dialog box remains open more than 120 seconds, the application will terminate and the Remove Hidden Data add-in will proceed to the next file, or close if it has reached the last file.</p><p>You can type either a slash (/) or a dash (-) as a flag to precede parameters. Flags are not case-sensitive.
</p><p>If you type in multiple flags, only the first one will be recognized.</p><p>You must enter the /source parameter first, optionally followed by the /destination parameter. All other parameters can be in any order.</p><p>If you type a slash (/) at the end of the source directory name, the tool will fail.
</p><p>The syntax for OFFRHD.EXE is as follows:</p><p>OFFRHD [/?] source [destination] [/O] [/R] [/F:filetype] [/L: logfile] [/A]</p><table><tr><th>Parameter</th><th>Description</th></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">source</b></td><td>Required. Specifies the drive, directory, and files for which you want to remove personal information. Can be any valid, fully-qualified path name.
</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">destination</b></td><td>Optional. Specifies a location for scanned files. If you do not specify this field, all files will be saved in the same directory with a suffix representing the current date. For example, -C010503 would represent January 5, 2003. If the destination file already exists, it will be overwritten.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/O</b></td><td>Specifies that no prompt will display to confirm that you want to overwrite an existing file.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/R</b></td><td>Specifies that contents of the source directory and its subdirectories will be examined.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/F:filetype</b></td><td>Specify format for destination files.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/F:H</b></td><td>Specifies HTML.
</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/F:B</b></td><td>Specifies binary document format. If you do not specify this parameter, the default will be to save in the same format as the source file.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/L:logfile</b></td><td>Specifies a location to stores the log file. If you do not specify this, the log will display when the tool is finished.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/A</b></td><td>Specifies that the tool will generate a report of issues found in the file but will not remove any data.</td></tr><tr><td><b class="bterm">/:?</b></td><td>Displays a list of all available parameters.</td></tr></table><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="log_file" name="log_file">Log file</a></h2></p><p>When the Remove Hidden Data add-in is finished reviewing the file(s), a log file displays the results of the review process. You can save this file if you want to refer to it later.</p><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p><p><h2><a id="remove_data" name="remove_data">Using Remove Hidden Data with IRM</a></h2></p><p>In Office 2003, you cannot run the Remove Hidden Data tool on IRM-protected documents unless you are either the owner of the document or you have been granted ΓÇ£ChangeΓÇ¥ permission with the option to ΓÇ£Access content programmatically.ΓÇ¥</p><p>To give permissions to run the Remove Hidden Data tool on IRM-protected documents, do the following:
</p><ol><li>On the <b class="ui">File</b> menu, click <b class="ui">Permission</b>, <b class="ui">Restrict Permission As</b>.</li><li>Select the user account (usually your own) to create or open the content, then click <b class="ui">OK</b>.</li><li>On the <b class="ui">Permission</b> dialog box, click <b class="ui">More Options</b>.</li><li>Now click the user account to whom you want to grant access. (The user account must have Change permission on the document to use the Remove Hidden Data tool).</li><li>Click <b class="ui">Access content programmatically</b>, and click <b class="ui">OK</b>.
</li></ol><p>Return to <a href="#contents">contents</a>.</p></body></html>
