Show All

Hide All

Before you give others a copy of a document, it's a good idea to review the document's personal and hidden information, and decide whether it's appropriate to include. You may want to remove some information from the document and from the document file properties before you share the document with others.

Note  Unless you send your document to Microsoft, Microsoft does not have access to any information from your document.

Personal information is stored on the following feature areas in Microsoft Office Visio:

• File properties: Author, Manager, Company, and Last saved by. This information is removed when you select the Remove personal information from file properties on save check box and save the document.
• Text fields that you insert into shapes or text blocks.

Creator, Manager, and Company text field information is removed when you select the Remove personal information from file properties on save check box and save the document.

For all other text fields, you must manually edit or remove the text field to remove that information. Because text fields can be visible to anyone reading your document, be sure that the information you place in text fields is not information that you want to keep private.

• File name and directory information that appears on the General tab in the Properties dialog box and in the custom text fields.
• Routing slips.
• E-mail message headers that are generated by the Send to Mail Recipient (as Attachment) command on the File menu.
• Comments inserted on the page.
• Reviewer names and initials.
• The Name and Initials fields under User Information on the General tab in the Options dialog box (Tools menu). The user name identifies the name of the person working on the file. The name appears in the Properties dialog box after you save the file for the first time and also in the Reviewing task pane. Initials show in the comment and review notes.

This information is not automatically removed when you select the Remove personal information from file properties on save check box and save the document. You must manually edit or remove the text in the Name and Initials fields to remove that information from the General tab in the Options dialog box.

Remove personal information from file properties in a Visio drawing or template file

Remove personal information from file properties in a stencil file

Documents viewed in a shared server environment