# Word Document Cleaning-How Can It Be Done? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 24, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635 "2002-12-24T00:40:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/1 "2002-12-24T00:40:21Z")
- - - The last few weeks I’ve seen a few stories online about how various people have used utilities to recover the errors and changes in Word documents. Is there any utility available anywhere that can do this? Is there any utility available for removing the appended changes from a document? ~ ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/2 "2002-12-24T01:00:47Z")
- - - Here’s one example I was able to find: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/27852.html](http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/27852.html) ~ ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/3 "2002-12-24T02:06:36Z")
I have noticed that you take a DOC with a file size of, say, 10K, make a small change, say, delete a couple of words, now save it and the file size is 8way\* bigger. Obviously, it is keeping track of the changes. I seldomly send out documents in MSWORD format but, when I do, I highlight the text and paste it into a brand new document so the history of changes is lost. ---
**Author:** ![viking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@viking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/viking)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/4 "2002-12-24T02:27:31Z")
Well, it is keeping track of _something_, but I’m not sure what… I have received MS Word docs and dumped them into a plain text editor, as I don’t have anything MS. The document was largely gibberish, althought the intended text was mostly there 7 or 8 times over… The scary part is that there were also a bunch of totally random clippings of other documents the sender had done months (even a year and more) prior. Don’t ever send Word documents if you have ever done anything confidential on that computer 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/5 "2002-12-24T11:41:04Z")
viking, I am quite sure what you say is not correct in MS-WORD97. If you take the final text you want and paste it in the document that is all you will see in it. At least that’s what’s happened every time I’ve tried it. Can you prove otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![starfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@starfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/starfish)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/6 "2002-12-24T13:16:13Z")
**sailor** , cutting and pasting as you describe will work. However, **viking** is opening the word document in a text editor not cutting and pasting. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/7 "2002-12-24T13:19:56Z")
starfish, you are missing the point. viking said: “Don’t ever send Word documents if you have ever done anything confidential on that computer” and I am saying that if you paste (or type and make no changes) then the document has no other information from past changes and much less from other documents. If this is not true I would like to see some proof. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-document-cleaning-how-can-it-be-done/144635/8 "2002-12-24T13:32:08Z")
The one thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is to save your document into rich text format.