Helpdesk

Understanding Metadata

The dialogue below will appear when you open a document that has been 'scrubbed' of metadata.

This metadata removal will most likely have been undertaken by your client to ensure that any personal information - including names, dates and times - has been removed from tracked changes and comments.

Selecting 'Yes - Retain Metadata'

The metadata will continue to be removed from your document each time you save changes unless you select 'Yes - Retain Metadata'.

When you select this button your document will retain all your author details and 'Maddocks' will be displayed as the author of any changes or comments. 

Selecting 'No - continue to remove Metadata'

If you select 'No - continue to remove Metadata' all your subsequent changes will be authored by 'Maddocks' until you you 'save' or 'save as' the document. On saving, Word will update the author from 'Maddocks' to 'Author', and anonymise your user information details.

When should I select 'Yes'?

When you want to differentiate between a client's mark up and your own, select 'Yes'.

When should I select 'No'?

Sometimes your client will track changes in a document and then send them to you for review. However, the client may want you to edit these changes but not indicate that 'Maddocks' authored these changes. In other words, you are to make any required changes 'incognito'. In this circumstance, you want to retain the metadata removal setting so that all the changes you make either to the client 'mark up' or in addition to the client 'mark up' will be displayed as authored by 'Author'. Under this scenario, select 'No'.

Word 2010 and the Document Inspector

The settings discussed above can be accessed from File\Info\Check for Issues