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Some types of "hidden" information are easier for people to discover than others. For example, the versioning feature stores previous copies of your Word document within that same file. You can access the previous versions by using menu commands in the document. On the other hand, if someone opened your document in a text or low-level binary file editor, the "hidden" information left by the random numbering used to improve merge features or by having the Allow fast save check box (Tools menu, Options command, Save tab) selected could be discovered.

Versioning

A document that includes multiple versions will display the Versions icon on the status bar, as shown below.

If you don't want people to be able to read previous versions of your document, you'll need to disable versioning, and then remove the previous versions from the document.

Fast save

The Allow fast saves option speeds up the process of saving by recording only the changes that are made to a document. These changes are appended to the end of the document. When you perform a full save (File menu, Save command), the changes are incorporated into the document, and the appended text is removed.

If someone opened your file with a text editor before a full save was performed, some of these appended changes may be seen.

Random number to improve merge

When you compare and merge documents, Word uses randomly generated numbers to help keep track of related documents. Although these numbers are hidden, they could potentially be used to demonstrate that two documents are related. If you choose not to store these numbers, the results of merged documents will be less than optimal.