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Information About MS Word

There are aspects of MS Word that users need to be made aware of. Not being aware of these issues could cause embarrassment, breach of security, breach of confidence and even personal danger.
Most of these relate to the common, but poor, practice of distributing information as word ".doc" files. These issues are mostly specific to MS Word, and users of other word processors probably don't need to change their practices.

Word Documents and Security.

The distribution of Microsoft Word documents outside an organisation should be discouraged.

Reasons:

• The files are large, this slows down email systems.
• The files can contain viruses.
• It is bad "Netiquette", the recipient might not have Word, (or even the correct version) or a viewer.
• MS Word files contain far more information than just what would be printed.
• MS Word 97 documents contain the MAC (Unique network card identification) address of the machine the document was created on.
• MS Word documents also contain the location where the file was originally stored.
• MS Word documents also retain deleted text within them.

These facts are easy to confirm, just take a word document which has had some text deleted and open it with a text editor - notepad will do if the file is small.

Some tests that have been have done.

The files below were examined with !StrongEd text editor.

Test File 1: An old document from 1999 created with Word 97. The letter was a second letter to an organisation, where the body of the first one had been deleted and replaced it with new text.

Recovered: The text of the original letter. Network Card Address. The network name of the computer. The locations of various files on the computer.

Test File 2: A new word 2000 document sent by an ICQ user, who didn't reveal her full name. Her real name was recovered from the file, as she had used it as the name of the directory which the file was stored in on her hard disk. (She is aware of this now, and will not be sending out any more word documents.)

Hypothetical Scenarios.

1. An individual wishes to make a press release from part of a document. He deletes a block of confidential text and sends out the word document. A recipient loads the file into a text editor and recovers the confidential deleted text. The sender is a government official.

2. A chat room user wishes to send a message to someone she has talked to but not given her details to. She decides to send a word document as an attachment via a web based email service. Rather than write it from scratch she finds a file that has part of what she wants to say already. She deletes her name telephone number and address, and makes some other changes then sends the file. She is unaware that she has sent out all her personal details. The recipient is a stalker.

As a result of this the writer of this document no longer uses MS Word.

Other Solutions to the problem

Receipt of Word Documents

If you ever accept a word file make sure it is virus scanned with an up to date scanner. If this is not possible, reject it and request the document saved as rich text format. Unsolicited files should be viewed with extreme caution.

Alternative to sending Word Documents.

• Send plain text. This format cannot contain hidden information or viruses. It can be inserted in the body of an email, making it far quicker for the recipient to read. If you need to send pictures attach them in jpeg format.
• Convert to PDF format and send that. On a PC this can be done with the commercial adobe acrobat distiller, or the freeware ghostscript, the free primopdf or others. This option is ideal if the document is finished and may need to be printed.
• Save as RTF and send that. (Note: with graphics included they can be big).
• Use the Open Document Format (ODF), which is designed for this pupose, some organisions will require the use of this format.

Alternatives to using Word

Home users seem to feel that they should use word at home to keep compatibility with their work. However work will usually have technical support and virus scanning available, something the home user will often have to pay for (if the employers cover this then the situation is somewhat different).

As well as various commercial packages such as Wordperfect or Wordpro, there are free packages available.

• Abiword - being developed for several systems including Windows, Linux and MacOS.
  In appearance similar to word, but easier in use and missing most of its features that only serve to annoy most users. Able to Import word files. Able to export RTF. Still being developed.
• OpenOffice - A whole FREE MSOffice compatible suite, (perhaps too large to be viable as a download without a broadband connection.) Able to import and export most office formats. Able to export PDF, supports ODF. Able to repair many Microsoft Office Files that crash the original programs.
• Word viewer, this allows you to view word documents, if you need to view but not edit word documents, this could be a solution. Worth having as well as the above.

Alternatives to using a PC.

Users often feel they need the same computers as at work at home, forgetting the support costs, alternative exist.

• EasiWriter and TechWriter. Two highly respected commercial package available for RISC OS and Mac OS systems, TechWriter has powerful equation creating abilities, they both have the ability to load and save Word files. A word file loaded into either of these and then saved does not retain the deleted and private information referred to above or any viruses.
• Antiword. A word file reader for platforms Microsoft does not support.

Viruses

It is very strongly recommended that all users of Word 6 and above and Microsoft Windows subscribe to a reputable Anti-virus system.

MS Word and Floppy disks.

These should never be worked from. Copy the file onto your hard drive or network area, work on it there, copy it back when you have finished. At best it will slow down the system, (an extreme example is a mail merge that took a few seconds from a hard drive, taking 20 minutes from a floppy disk.) At worst it is possible to crash the computer and corrupt ALL the data on the disk. (This is even more important for thin client systems, a good reason that most do not have floppy drives).

If anyone ever advises you to work from floppy, either they mean copy your work to floppy after you have finished, or their advice should be ignored.

If you open a document from a floppy, then save it to hard drive immediately, before making any changes, that should usually be safe. When you have finished entirely, choose "Save As" and save to the floppy disk, it would also be sensible to choose Rich text format (RTF) as the type, to eliminate the chances of bringing a virus home.

The same applies to files saved on a local machine (eg your C drive) when using a thin client system (eg Citrix).

Other issues

Word 6 and 7 (also known as 95) users should not feel pressured into upgrading to the latest version just for compatibility reasons, a free upgrade to allow these versions to load the newer filetypes is available from Microsoft.

Feedback

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This document was initially created on EasiWriter Professional+ using RISC OS 4.