OFF98: How to Remove Extraneous Data from Existing Documents

Any files that you have created prior to running the Updater may still contain extraneous data.

NOTE: When you run the Microsoft Office 98 Updater, any new files that you create in Office programs will not contain extraneous data.

This article provides a method for removing any possible extraneous data from your existing files.

The Microsoft Office 98 Updater addresses a security issue in Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition. This problem is caused by the way space on the hard disk is allocated for file storage by Office 98. The file system of Mac OS, like the file systems of many other operating systems, does not delete a file when you use the Delete command. It removes the reference to the file and marks the space it occupied as "free." Office 98 does not initialize the hard disk space that Mac OS allocates for a Save command; therefore, a small amount of unused space on the hard disk may contain random data from previously deleted files. While the data cannot be viewed when opened as a native Office file, it can be viewed using an ASCII text editor.

This update changes the behavior of Microsoft Office and OLE to initialize the hard disk space before saving.

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Removing Extraneous Data from Existing Files

To remove extraneous data from documents you created prior to running the Microsoft Office 98 Updater, follow these steps:

1. Start the Office program that created your file.
2. On the File menu, click Open.
3. Locate and Select your file. Click Open.
4. If you are using Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition, add or change any text in your document.
   
   NOTE: This step is necessary because Microsoft Word saves files differently than Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition and Microsoft PowerPoint 98 Macintosh Edition.
5. On the File menu, click Save As.
6. Leave the name of your file as it is listed in the Save Current Document As box. Click Save.
7. When you are prompted to replace the existing file, click Replace.
8. On the File menu, click Close.
9. For each file you want to clean, repeat steps 2 through 8.