Hiding Comments from others in a Word doc

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

If I put comments into a document, is there any way to hide these comments
from others who open the document? And what versions of Word would be able
to do this, if any?
 
Not really. The Comments and Comment indicators (highlight) is
controlled by the recipient of the document. IOW you may be able to
hide comments using your preferences but they do not travel with the
document.

Perhaps you can expand on what you are trying to do and we could offer
some alternative suggestions.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
Okay, this is what I'm trying to accomplish: I work in a law office and when
I revise a document, I often put comments in that refer to why the revision
has been made, however, I don't want the client to see what I've written in
my comment.

Thanks for your help and I hope that explains a little better.
 
I've worked in IT support for law firms for years. The only way to guarantee
that this sort of metadata doesn't get to the client is to send a hard paper
copy by fax. But if you need to create an electronic copy, your best bet is
to create a PDF of the file and secure the PDF. You can set options to
exclude certain types of metadata from the PDF.
Word is a telltale. You can get all sorts of information from a Word file...
think about the "dodgy dossier" for starters.
Genine
 
If it's in the document then it's available for viewing. There really
isn't a foolproof way to hide information in a document.

Now what you could use the Remove Hidden Data utility which will
create another copy of your document with Comments, Tracked Changes,
and other metadata removed. Then you could use clean the copy for
distribution.

Here's a link you can use to obtain the download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ed-d43e-42ca-bc7b-5446d34e5360&displaylang=en

Otherwise I'd take Genie's advise and use PDF.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
Back
Top