As usual, when our newsletter editor started asking for articles for this month’s newsletter, I went blank. I usually do better under pressure so… I waited. While I was waiting… and waiting…I came across an article about invisible ink at work in the Wall Street Journal that caught my attention. I remember being the sly one when I was much younger using a mixture of white grapefruit and lemon juice to write secret messages to my friends, but this article was talking about a much more serious situation. So, after reading the article, which I will refer to from time to time (The Wall Street Journal – Friday, October 20, 2000), I decided to do a little more research on this matter.

Another name for today’s high-tech invisible ink is "Metadata." It seems that software makers such as Microsoft created programs like Word (among others in the Office product line) that just happen to leave behind a lot of information that doesn’t appear on your screen, such as the author’s name and/or initials, company name, computer name, the name of the network server or hard drive where the file was saved, non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects, other file properties and information, the name of each subsequent person who has worked on the file and sometimes, if the correct options are not selected, deleted text and various other revisions and versions. And, you know the old saying, "out of sight – out of mind." Well, maybe you should mind this!

Microsoft says Metadata is used for a variety of purposes to enhance the editing, viewing, filing, and retrieval of Office documents. But, this just may be something you don’t want to share. Because Metadata is created in a variety of ways within Word documents, there is currently no single method that you can use to eliminate all such content from your documents. Microsoft says it hasn’t had many complaints about this problem in the past but… in late spring of next year, when the next version of Office is due to hit the shelves, there will be a "privacy option" that will allow a Word document author to "remove all personal information with the click of one button and also be warned if you’re saving tracked changes and comments." (…and they haven’t had many complaints.)

Some Metadata is readily accessible through the Microsoft Word user interface; other Metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as opening a document in a low-level binary file editor. But sometimes even a simple text editor like Notepad can be very revealing. Personally, I can’t wait till someone sends me an email with a Word document attached. I’m nosy by nature!

The Wall Street Journal article talked about someone on the Democratic campaign trail continually receiving slamming emails with Word documents attached and signed by someone that evidentially didn’t exist. After three months of this finally some techy aide decided to do a little mouse-clicking investigating and uncovered hidden text that seemed to link the email to the campaign of the Republican incumbent. Fancy that! High-tech politics as usual? (And I’m not hitting on the Republicans. The roles could have just as easily been reversed.)

So, what can you do in the meantime, before Office 10 hits the stores, to make sure your invisible ink stays invisible? First of all, check your setting under Tools | Options and see what you allowed to go out in your last Word document. Then go to Microsoft’s web site and search for the word Metadata. You should find article Q223790 in Microsoft’s Product Support Services database entitled "How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Word Documents." I won’t try to go into the fixes here. The document is quite lengthy so I’ll leave that part to you. Also, notice that this problem isn’t new to the latest version of Office. This document was published back in the Word 97 days.

There is also something else you can do. The kind people at Payne Consulting Group, after discovering some hidden text in some of their legal documents, devised security procedures for removing hidden text from its files. They developed a program called Metadata Assistant to purge any unseen or unwanted information from documents. The program can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.payneconsulting.com/MetaDataAssistant/. It’s free because they can’t guarantee that everything will be stripped out. But hey, it’s a lot better than the alternatives… and it’s free!

Oh, by the way, the Democrat lost the election anyway, but the investigation into the email continues. He just may win after all. Don’t forget to vote November 7^th so we can get rid of these ads on television! u