Last updated: October 2006

This page is a supplement to the Privacy Statement for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. In order to understand the data collection and use practices relevant for a particular Office program or service, you should read both the Privacy Statement for the 2007 Microsoft Office system and this supplement.

Using Microsoft Office Online templates

The Welcome to Microsoft Office Access screen (Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click New) can provide you with up-to-date assistance downloaded from Microsoft Office Online for documents that are based on templates. You can also send feedback on the templates and provide a numeric rating for each template that you download.

If you want to enable or disable downloads from Microsoft Office Online, see Get Help, templates, and additional online content in the Help window.

When you open a template or a file that is based on a template, Microsoft Office Access 2007 can contact Microsoft Office Online and send the ID for that template, the program and version that you are currently using, together with standard computer information. This is dependent on your online Help settings.

The template ID is used to identify the original template as downloaded from Microsoft Office Online or included in your Office Access 2007 installation. It does not uniquely identify your Access database. The ID is the same for all users of the same template.

Featured links updates

Office Access 2007 provides a list of links in the Welcome to Microsoft Office Access screen. You can choose to update these links on a regular schedule by clicking Automatically update this list from the Web in the More on Office Online section. If you choose to update these links regularly, Office Access 2007 will periodically contact Microsoft Office Online and will return updated links to Office Access 2007.

To turn off featured links, see Turn on or off Microsoft Office Online featured links.

Linking to data sources

Linked tables and other data sources are saved in metadata as part of your Office Access 2007 database. In some cases, the link may include your user name or information about servers on your network. In the case of a data connection, you can choose to save a user name or password within the data connection link.

Also, if you have associated databases, the location of the associated database is saved in the Access database.

Printing

When you print an Office Access 2007 file and then save that file, Office Access 2007 saves the path to your printer with the file. In some cases, the path may include a user name or computer name.

Document Workspace sites

With Office Access 2007, you can access a Document Workspace site on a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site. A Document Workspace site is a shared space where you can quickly and easily collaborate with other team members on one or multiple Access databases.

When you access a Document Workspace site, Office Access 2007 downloads some data from the Document Workspace site to provide you with information about that site. Specifically, Office Access 2007 obtains the following:

• Name of the Windows SharePoint Services site
• URL or address of the site
• Names, e-mail addresses, and permission levels of the site users
• Lists of the documents, tasks, and other information available from the site

Office Access 2007 also stores a list of the Windows SharePoint Services sites that you have visited on your computer, in the form of cookies. This list is used to provide you with quick access to the sites that you have visited before. The list of sites that you have visited is not accessed by Microsoft and is not exposed to the Internet unless you choose to make the list more broadly available.

Windows SharePoint Services

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services provides shared, Web-based Workspace sites where you can collaborate on documents or meetings.

When you access a SharePoint site, by using either the Web browser or any Office program, the site will save a cookie to your computer if you have permissions to create a new subsite on that site. Taken together, these cookies form a list of sites to which you have permissions. This list is used by several Office programs to provide you with quick access to the sites that you have visited before.

The list of sites that you have visited is not accessed by Microsoft and is not exposed to the Internet unless you choose to make the list more broadly available.

You can clear this list by using your Web browser to clear your cache of cookies.

In Windows SharePoint Services, when you create a new Web site or list, or add or invite people to an existing Web site or list, the site saves the following for each person, including you:

• Full name
• E-mail address
• User logon name (Microsoft Windows NT logon — for example, DOMAIN\user name)

All elements of the SharePoint site include two fields: Created By and Modified By. The Created By field is filled in with the user name of the person who originally created the element and the date when it was created. The Modified By field is filled in with the user name of the person who last modified the Office Access 2007 database and the date when it was last modified.

Administrators of the servers where SharePoint sites are hosted have access to some data from these sites, which is used for analyzing the usage patterns of the site and improving the percentage of time that the site is available. This data is available only to the server administrators and is not shared with Microsoft unless Microsoft is hosting the SharePoint site. The data specifically captured includes the names, e-mail addresses, and permissions of everyone with access to the site.

All users with access to a particular SharePoint site may search and view all content available on that site.

Auditing

Windows SharePoint Services provides auditing features that allow administrators to keep a reliable audit trail of how users are working with important content.

When Windows SharePoint Services administrators enable the Auditing feature, the server will automatically record in the SharePoint Content Database certain actions performed by the user. These actions include view, edit, check-in, and check-out. For each recorded action, the server will record identifying information about the file, the action, and the user's SharePoint ID and IP address. No data is sent to Microsoft as part of this transaction.

This feature is off by default and is only available to administrators of SharePoint sites where content is stored.

Instant messaging and notifications

Office Access 2007 provides you with the ability to send instant messages from within the program itself and provides you with the ability to be alerted when people are online or when certain changes are made to shared documents or workspaces.

Office Access 2007 uses a Microsoft instant messaging client to provide you with the ability to see the online presence of other people and to send messages to them. Office Access 2007 includes a Web control that allows the instant messaging presence to be displayed within a Web page. The purpose of this feature is to allow you to use Web pages to collaborate directly with other people who are working on the same Access databases or workspaces.

Web page scripts that are written with this Web control in mind can transmit presence data from your instant messaging program to the Web server hosting the script. By default, this functionality is only enabled for intranet sites, trusted sites, and sites on the local computer.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services pages and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 pages both make use of this control. Neither of these types of pages transmits presence data back to the Web server.

When you visit a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site or a SharePoint Server site and create an alert, Office Access 2007 will add a cookie to your computer with the following data:

• Name of the site
• URL of the site
• Whether the alert source is a Windows SharePoint Services site or an Office SharePoint Server site
• URL used by the site to expose the alert service

New file formats

Office Access 2007 uses the new XML-based file format to create templates. This file format is extensible, meaning that users can specify additional schemas or tags to be included with the file. When a database is created based on a template, Access does not use the additional schemas or tags added by the user. An add-in or other third-party code can also attach additional metadata information to the Microsoft Office file format that will not be viewable in Office Access 2007.

You can verify the metadata that has been associated with a file by viewing the XML file with a non-Office text viewer.

Data collection in Access

Office Access 2007 allows you to collect data via e-mail by sending HTML or forms based on Microsoft Office InfoPath. When you send out the data collection e-mail message, the e-mail addresses of all recipients are collected and stored in the Access database. You can use this information to track data received from the recipients and to send e-mail messages to them in the future. You can choose to have the data submitted via e-mail stored in the database automatically or manually.

Where your name may be stored

In certain instances, Office Access 2007 stores your name to provide you with a better experience when using some features. For example, your name is stored in these locations:

• Author fields
• AuthorName file property

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , click Access Options, and then click Popular.
2. Under File Settings, select the Remove personal information from file properties on close check box.

Microsoft Office solutions created by other companies may also include your name or other personal information in the custom properties associated with your file.

If you use the Microsoft Office Web Control, Microsoft Office Excel Data Access, DataCalc, or other features that allow you to connect directly to another data source, your authorization information (user ID and password) may be saved within your Access database. To change or delete this authorization information, you will need to change the properties of the connection appropriately.

Digital signatures

A digital signature is an optional feature that can help you to authenticate the identity of the person who sent you an Access database. A digital signature is a unique encrypted value of the data in the Access database that you are signing. When you send an Access database with a digital signature, the signature is sent to the recipient, along with the data in the Access database and a trusted digital certificate from you (the sender). The digital certificate is issued by a Certification Authority, such as VeriSign, and contains information to authenticate the sender and verify that the original contents of the Access database have not been altered.

When you sign an Access database, you will see a dialog box that shows the information that will be included in the digital signature, such as your system date and time, operating system version number, Microsoft Office version number, and Office Access 2007 version number. If you send a signed Access database to other people, the recipients will not be able to view the information about your system, although they will be able to view the contents of the Access database itself.

Database Protection

Database Protection helps you to protect your Office Access 2007 database by encrypting it with a password.

To encrypt the database with a password, do the following:

1. On the Advanced Tools tab, in the Database Tools group, click Encrypt with Password.
2. Type a password in the Password and Verify Password boxes.

The password that you enter is not stored with the file and is used to generate keys to encrypt the file. You have the option to remove the password and encryption on the database. To remove the encryption, do the following:

1. On the Advanced Tools tab, in the Database Tools group, click Remove Database Password and Encryption.
2. Type your password in the Password box.