"Fast Saves" feature in Word 2004

[lmc864]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

I personality don't have Office installed on my Mac. However, I do have a friend that used to use Office 2004 (he's since upgraded to 2008) and I used his Mac periodically whenever mine wasn't working properly.

I'm worried about Fast Saves because apparently previously deleted text can be retrieved by anyone if Fast Saves was enabled when the document was saved. FS, from what I've read, only appends the changes to the document, instead of overwriting the older text.

This really bothers me, as I used Word to write personal information about myself and others that could fall into the wrong hands. I tried to get this question answered at Macrumors.com, but to no avail:

<http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=552464>

I have two questions about FS that I really hope someone can answer:

1. Is FS disabled or enabled by default? I can't find anything about this in Microsoft's FAQ's section, and the last version to have FS addressed was Word 98 (which Microsoft said was enabled by default). However, I have read conflicting message board posts from other sites either stating that in Word 2004 it was enabled, with others saying it was disabled by default.

Also, was the basic functionality of Fast Saves eliminated in a patch or Service Pack, like in Word 2003 last fall?

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938808>

2. (This is a repost from Macrumors)

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

 

[lmc864]

John McGhie, thank you so much for answering my question...it's a huge relief. I don't want to give out my full info (or my friend's) for privacy reasons, so I replaced the actual info with descriptions of what would otherwise be in its places.

Now, as to the metadata section that goes:

w
cause,
appeara
ecause
readers.
)

readers

....Could you tell me why part or all of the body text gets repeated in fragments further down? I've only seen that in metadata from Office 2004, but I've never seen it in 2003 metadata.

 

[John McGhie]

Probably unresolved tracked changes. It could also be a bit of corruption.

John McGhie, thank you so much for answering my question...it's a huge relief.
I don't want to give out my full info (or my friend's) for privacy reasons, so
I replaced the actual info with descriptions of what would otherwise be in its
places.

Now, as to the metadata section that goes:

w
cause,
appeara
ecause
readers.
)

readers

...Could you tell me why part or all of the body text gets repeated in
fragments further down? I've only seen that in metadata from Office 2004, but
I've never seen it in 2003 metadata.

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[lmc864]

Well, I never used Tracking in my documents, so that wasn't my concern. Still, I find it weird that I've only seen the sentence fragment replication in Word 2004 metadata but not for Word 2003. Is it OS-related?

 

[CyberTaz]

FWIW - Allow Fast Saves is not an option in Word 2008 ‹ the "feature" has
been removed altogether.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[lmc864]

I am aware that FS was removed from Word 2008. However, I'm still wondering whether or not the paragraph replication/fragmentation is only in Word 2004 (all of the examples I've seen were Word 2004 docs) or if the Windows version of Office has similar example. If so, then why is this the case, and what could this metadata be?