Help protect your privacy

Which Office program are you using?

Word

Excel

PowerPoint

Outlook

Word

By using Office, you can quickly assemble, display, and share your data with other people, and take steps to protect your privacy, too.

Do any of the following:

Specify the personal information that appears in all your Office documents

To help maintain the level of privacy that you want, you can edit or remove any of the author and contact information that is associated with Office documents. The author and contact information that you specify automatically appears in all your Office documents, including those that you share with other people, unless you remove your personal information from a document.

1. On the Word menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Personal Settings, click User Information  .

3. Make the changes that you want.

   Note: When you update the information in one Office application, the information is automatically updated for all Office applications.

Remove personal information from a document

If you share a document with other people, you can remove personal information, such as author name and company, that Office automatically adds to a document.

1. On the Word menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Personal Settings, click Security  .

3. Under Privacy options, select the Remove personal information from this file on save check box.

4. Save the document.

   Notes: The following personal information is removed from your file:

   • In document properties, the properties Author, Manager, and Company on the Summary tab, and Last saved by on the Statistics tab.

   • All names associated with comments or tracked changes are changed to "Author." If you add or edit your name in a specific comment or elsewhere in your file, that information is not removed by this procedure. You must remove that information manually.

Turn off tracking of recently used documents

On the File menu, the Open Recent command lists the documents that you recently opened. You can hide this menu option so that other people who use your computer can't see the list of recently used documents.

1. On the Word menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Authoring and Proofing Tools, click General   .

3. Clear the Track recently opened documents check box.

See also

Password protect a document

Excel

By using Office, you can quickly assemble, display, and share your data with other people, and take steps to protect your privacy, too.

Do any of the following:

Specify the personal information that appears in all your Office documents

To help maintain the level of privacy that you want, you can edit or remove any of the author and contact information that is associated with Office documents. The author and contact information that you specify automatically appears in all your Office documents, including those that you share with other people, unless you remove your personal information from a document.

1. On the Excel menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Authoring, click General  .

3. In the User name box, make the changes that you want.

   Note: When you update the information in one Office application, the information is automatically updated for all Office applications.

Remove personal information from a document

If you share a document with other people, you can remove personal information, such as author name and company, that Office automatically adds to a document.

Note: Excel does not remove personal information from shared workbooks.

1. On the Excel menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Sharing and Privacy, click Security  .

3. Select the Remove personal information from this file on save check box.

4. Save the workbook.

   Notes: The following personal information is removed from your file:

   • In workbook properties, the properties Author, Manager, and Company on the Summary tab, and Last saved by on the Statistics tab.

   • All names associated with comments or tracked changes are changed to "Author." If you add or edit your name in a specific comment or elsewhere in your file, that information is not removed by this procedure. You must remove that information manually.

   • The sender's e-mail address that appears in the e-mail message header when you send a workbook by using e-mail.

Turn off tracking of recently used documents

On the File menu, the Open Recent command lists the documents that you recently opened. You can hide this menu option so that other people who use your computer can't see the list of recently used documents.

1. On the Excel menu, click Preferences.

2. Under Authoring, click General  .

3. Clear the Show this number of recent documents check box.

See also

Require a password to open or modify a workbook

PowerPoint

By using Office, you can quickly assemble, display, and share your data with other people, and take steps to protect your privacy, too.

Do any of the following:

Specify the personal information that appears in all your Office documents

To help maintain the level of privacy that you want, you can edit or remove any of the author and contact information that is associated with Office documents. The author and contact information that you specify automatically appears in all your Office documents, including those that you share with other people, unless you remove your personal information from a document.

1. On the PowerPoint menu, click Preferences.

2. Click Advanced  .

3. Under User information, in the Name box and the Initials box, make the changes that you want.

   Note: When you update the information in one Office application, the information is automatically updated for all Office applications.

Turn off tracking of recently used documents

On the File menu, the Open Recent command lists the documents that you recently opened. You can hide this menu option so that other people who use your computer can't see the list of recently used documents.

1. On the PowerPoint menu, click Preferences.

2. Click General  , and then clear the Track recently opened documents check box.

See also

Outlook

By using Office, you can quickly assemble, display, and share your data with other people, and take steps to protect your privacy, too.

Do any of the following:

Specify the personal information that appears in all your Office documents

To help maintain the level of privacy that you want, you can edit or remove any of the author and contact information that is associated with Office documents. The author and contact information that you specify automatically appears in all your Office documents, including those that you share with other people, unless you remove your personal information from a document.

1. At the bottom of the navigation pane, click Contacts  .

2. On the Organize tab, click Me.

   

3. Click the tab that contains the information that you want to change, and then make the changes that you want.

   Note: When you update the information in one Office application, the information is automatically updated for all Office applications.

Use a Mac OS user account to protect your privacy on a shared computer

If more than one person uses the same computer, you can create separate user accounts to keep your e-mail messages and other Outlook items private.

Important: To perform the following procedure, you must have an administrator name and password.

1. On the Apple menu, click System Preferences.

2. Under System, click Accounts.

3. If the lock is closed, click the lock  , and then type an administrator name and password.

4. Under the list of accounts, click Add a user account  , fill in the boxes, and then click Create Account.

   Tip: For more information about how to add a new user account to your computer, see Mac Help.

See also

Manage identities