«

Jim wrote:
> On 12 Jun 2007, HenryD9 <> wrote:
>
>> Simply have the other person cut your text and paste it into a
>> fresh word document on their computer??
>>
>> "Jim" <> wrote in message
>> news:Xns994DAD68935935D4AM2@127.0.0.1...
>>> Is there a security utility which can help me with the following?
>>>
>>> I need to write some letters for someone else as if the letters
>>> were written only by the other person. I use my PC to write the
>>> leter and will email the other person a Word DOC file to use on
>>> their PC. We both use Word 2003 on WinXP.
>>>
>>> However I do not want the DOC file I send to show that I have been
>>> involved in any way at all.
>>>
>>> (a) I do not want data in File > Properties.
>>> (b) I do not want to have my default margins, font, etc.
>>> (c) I don't want the document file to have other data which has
>>> from elsewhere on my PC (perhaps temp data).
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> Until now I have been sending them unformatted text but this means
>>> the other person has to paste it into Word and then lay it all out
>>> and put in all the formatting for empahsis.
>>>
>>> Is there some software which will strip out the identifiers in a
>>> Word DOC file to anonymise it?
>>>
>>> Do I need to use some Word function to have two different sets of
>>> default layout? (See b above.)
>>
>
>
> Often cut and paste in Windows can preserve formatting.

If you're concerned about the formatting, type it in a plain text editor
such as Notepad and send it that way.


jc

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:42:38 +0100, Jim <> wrote:

>I tried RTF but I hear implementations are not consistent. For my needs
>there is not quite enough formatting in the RTF which I get from my RTF
>editor, Crypt Edit.

I thought you were using word?

Anyway .rtf is the way to go for compatibility and interchange
of documents without unwanted embedded things.


--
Jim Watt
http://www.gibnet.com

Jim <> writes:

> On 12 Jun 2007, Walter Roberson <> wrote:
>
> > In article Jim <> wrote:
> >>
> >>I need to write some letters for someone else as if the letters
> >>were written only by the other person.
> >>
> >>Until now I have been sending them unformatted text but this means
> >>the other person has to paste it into Word and then lay it all out
> >>and put in all the formatting for empahsis.
> >
> >
> > Perhaps if you save the file as RTF type? That's a text-only
> > format, so you could edit it to review that no trace of you is left
> > in.
> >
> > I don't use Word much; in what little I've done, I think I found
> > that the page size information was not preserved in the RTF file,
> > which required that the page size be changed on the imported file
> > -- but that's trivial compared to the import work they have had to
> > use before.
>
> I tried RTF but I hear implementations are not consistent. For my needs
> there is not quite enough formatting in the RTF which I get from my RTF
> editor, Crypt Edit.

So let me see if I have this straight.

You want something that removes margins font, etc, yet you want it to
have a bunch of formating that isn't available in the RTF format Word
spits out? These seem like conflicting goals to me.

I'm curious what info is or isn't in the .doc format exported by
Openoffice.org's writer program though.


--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

Todd H. wrote:


> You want something that removes margins font, etc,


I'd rather say that he wants something that removes metadata from the
formatting data, e.g. that it's still fat, 10pt, Times New Roman, but does
not belong to the style class "breakfast at Tifanny's".

> I'm curious what info is or isn't in the .doc format exported by
> Openoffice.org's writer program though.

Metadata about formatting for sure. Anyway else it removes everything it
doesn't understand, whereas the rest is exported via the user interface, so
you can change it. It also removes compiled macro code.

Jim <> (07-06-12 17:02:4:

> I need to write some letters for someone else as if the letters were
> written only by the other person. I use my PC to write the leter and
> will email the other person a Word DOC file to use on their PC. We
> both use Word 2003 on WinXP.
>
> However I do not want the DOC file I send to show that I have been
> involved in any way at all.

Others have already answered that part. However, your problem is a kind
of privacy problem. Microsoft did not care a lot about privacy, or they
did it that bad even intentionally. I don't know. But a lot of data is
saved in Microsoft Office files, quite a bunch of data, that doesn't
belong there and serves no purpose in that context. A quick binary look
at the file will show this.

This is why I would suggest to switch to something completely different,
which is not Microsoft. If quality is of matter, use LaTeX. You don't
care about the formatting, but let the professionals do it for you, so
that this `someone else' guy wouldn't even want or need to reformat it.

The other option is HTML. For example, you write the content and
`someone else' writes the stylesheet. In the worst case, HTML can be
copy&pasted into a fresh Office document, and it will preserve the text
formatting in a context-sensitive manner. In other words, it will
preserve the information that a piece of text is a title, or something
emphasized, and if you change the size, in which titles are printed,
then all titles will change at once.

Depending on how much time you are willing to invest in privacy, you
might prefer one or the other. LaTeX produces high quality output.
HTML, on the other hand, takes a much shorter learning path. There are
good WYSIWYG editors for both of them, so you don't need to learn a new
markup language, if you don't want to.


Regards,
Ertugrul Söylemez.


--
Security is the one concept, which makes things in your life stay as
they are. Otto is a man, who is afraid of changes in his life; so
naturally he does not employ security.

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:09:36 +0200, "Sebastian G." <>
wrote:

>Todd H. wrote:

>> I'm curious what info is or isn't in the .doc format exported by
>> Openoffice.org's writer program though.
>
>Metadata about formatting for sure. Anyway else it removes everything it
>doesn't understand, whereas the rest is exported via the user interface, so
>you can change it. It also removes compiled macro code.

Sebastian, this was too quick for me to understand.

Is there a reference somewhere describing these aspects in more depth?
I particularly didn't understand 'metadata about formatting', and
neither did I understand quite what the 'rest' is, or what is meant by
exporting via the user interface.


______________
regards,
Ron

On 12 Jun 2007, Jim Watt <_way> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:42:38 +0100, Jim <> wrote:
>
>>I tried RTF but I hear implementations are not consistent. For my
>>needs there is not quite enough formatting in the RTF which I get
>>from my RTF editor, Crypt Edit.
>
> I thought you were using word?
>
> Anyway .rtf is the way to go for compatibility and interchange
> of documents without unwanted embedded things.
>
>
> --
> Jim Watt
> http://www.gibnet.com

I am using word.

Seems you may not have read the whole of my posting where you see I am
replying to someone who asks if I have considered using RTF.

On 12 Jun 2007, Sebastian G. <> wrote:

> Todd H. wrote:
>
>
>> You want something that removes margins font, etc,
>
>
> I'd rather say that he wants something that removes metadata from
> the formatting data, e.g. that it's still fat, 10pt, Times New
> Roman, but does not belong to the style class "breakfast at
> Tifanny's".

I am the OP. I see I have done a poor job of explaining this and yet
I can't add much more to explain the original post.


>
>> I'm curious what info is or isn't in the .doc format exported by
>> Openoffice.org's writer program though.
>
> Metadata about formatting for sure. Anyway else it removes
> everything it doesn't understand, whereas the rest is exported via
> the user interface, so you can change it. It also removes compiled
> macro code.
>

On 12 Jun 2007, Colin B. <> wrote:

> In alt.computer.security Jim <> wrote:
>> On 12 Jun 2007, Sebastian G. <> wrote:
>>
>>> Jim wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Is there some software which will strip out the identifiers in a
>>>> Word DOC file to anonymise it?
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>>
>>> No, I'm not gonna search the link at
>>> <https://www.microsoft.com/downloads> for you.
>>
>> Good job you don't want to as there is nothing there. Heh!
>
> There is for me. If this is too difficult for you, you're in trouble.
>

I think I am. I guess that's why I have asked for help. I just don't
know everything about computing or word processing.

On 12 Jun 2007, jc <> wrote:

> Jim wrote:
>> On 12 Jun 2007, HenryD9 <> wrote:
>>
>>> Simply have the other person cut your text and paste it into a
>>> fresh word document on their computer??
>>>
>>> "Jim" <> wrote in message
>>> news:Xns994DAD68935935D4AM2@127.0.0.1...
>>>> Is there a security utility which can help me with the
>>>> following?
>>>>
>>>> I need to write some letters for someone else as if the letters
>>>> were written only by the other person. I use my PC to write the
>>>> leter and will email the other person a Word DOC file to use on
>>>> their PC. We both use Word 2003 on WinXP.
>>>>
>>>> However I do not want the DOC file I send to show that I have
>>>> been involved in any way at all.
>>>>
>>>> (a) I do not want data in File > Properties.
>>>> (b) I do not want to have my default margins, font, etc.
>>>> (c) I don't want the document file to have other data which has
>>>> from elsewhere on my PC (perhaps temp data).
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>> Until now I have been sending them unformatted text but this
>>>> means the other person has to paste it into Word and then lay it
>>>> all out and put in all the formatting for empahsis.
>>>>
>>>> Is there some software which will strip out the identifiers in a
>>>> Word DOC file to anonymise it?
>>>>
>>>> Do I need to use some Word function to have two different sets
>>>> of default layout? (See b above.)
>>>
>>
>>
>> Often cut and paste in Windows can preserve formatting.
>
> If you're concerned about the formatting, type it in a plain text
> editor such as Notepad and send it that way.
>


It is very important that I minimise the other person's work. If I
give them plain text to lay out and format then they will rightly say
is not part of our arrangement.

If you recall I want to do the actual work.

I want the result must not to look as if it came from me or from my
copy of Word or from my PC.