"Allow Fast Saves" feature in Office 2004
Recently I read about a feature in versions of Office up until 2003/2004 called "Fast Saves." Apparently, Microsoft put the feature in Office to save documents faster by only adding the changes to the document, rather than overwriting the older text that was deleted. One thing that disturbs me about this feature is the fact that metadata revealing deleted text could easily be retrieved by someone who receives the document.
While I don't have MS Office, I have used it to write documents on a friend's Mac (he has since upgraded to Office 2008, which doesn't have FS, and doesn't know anything about the feature) when my computer did not work.
I have two questions regarding this:
1. Is Fast Saves enabled by default? If not, was it disabled by default since it shipped in '04, or did Microsoft disable it with a patch or Service Pack, like they did in disabling FS on Office 2003 last fall?
2. Is the following metadata an example of FS being on? In this document and several others, I noticed that portions of the actual text are repeated in sentence and word fragments, with some of their words and letters missing (and with random symbols inserted, in some cases). Now, while I thought this might be an example of deleted data, I noticed that same pattern with documents in which I just pasted text from a website without modifying any of it.
Could it be a secondary aspect of FS, though?
----------------------------------------------------------
Normal
Normal
Default Paragraph Font
Default Paragraph Font
Table Normal
Table Normal
No List
No List
Hyperlink
Hyperlink
Unknownÿ！
Times New Roman
Times New Roman
Symbol
Symbol
MY NAME (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S NAME STATED TWICE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S NAME STATED TWICE (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S COMPUTER NAME (REDACTED)
Normal
FRIEND'S COMPUTER NAME (REDACTED)
Microsoft Word 11.3.8
PICT~D
Times New Roman
w
cause,
appeara
ecause
readers.
)
readers
MORE NAME INFO FOR FRIEND (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
_PID_HLINKS
While I don't have MS Office, I have used it to write documents on a friend's Mac (he has since upgraded to Office 2008, which doesn't have FS, and doesn't know anything about the feature) when my computer did not work.
I have two questions regarding this:
1. Is Fast Saves enabled by default? If not, was it disabled by default since it shipped in '04, or did Microsoft disable it with a patch or Service Pack, like they did in disabling FS on Office 2003 last fall?
2. Is the following metadata an example of FS being on? In this document and several others, I noticed that portions of the actual text are repeated in sentence and word fragments, with some of their words and letters missing (and with random symbols inserted, in some cases). Now, while I thought this might be an example of deleted data, I noticed that same pattern with documents in which I just pasted text from a website without modifying any of it.
Could it be a secondary aspect of FS, though?
----------------------------------------------------------
Normal
Normal
Default Paragraph Font
Default Paragraph Font
Table Normal
Table Normal
No List
No List
Hyperlink
Hyperlink
Unknownÿ！
Times New Roman
Times New Roman
Symbol
Symbol
MY NAME (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S NAME STATED TWICE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S NAME STATED TWICE (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
FRIEND'S COMPUTER NAME (REDACTED)
Normal
FRIEND'S COMPUTER NAME (REDACTED)
Microsoft Word 11.3.8
PICT~D
Times New Roman
w
cause,
appeara
ecause
readers.
)
readers
MORE NAME INFO FOR FRIEND (REDACTED)
TITLE (REDACTED)
_PID_HLINKS
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