Protecting info shared docs

[FrecklePaw]

I have to share documents with others with personal info in them, but in order to do so, I have to remove the PD data, let them (other person) add content to the document, then I need to add the removed info. back in when I receive the updated doc back, before onward transmission to other parties.
To make my life easier my question is...: How can I keep the personal info inside the document, share it with others (who will be editing), but have them not see it? Is there a way to do this?
Hopefully this is clear?
TIA
FP

[HansV]

As far as I know, that is not possible. When you remove personal information, it is removed permanently.

[Charles Kenyon]

As far as I know, this is a one way path. When you remove the information, it is removed.

[FrecklePaw]

Sorry - I think I may have confused everybody! It's not the Privacy Options > Document Inspector > Doc Properties and Personal Information that I'm referring to.
To clarify, it's simply information that might be contained within the document itself, within the body text or headers/footers.
Is there any way to 'hide' this, so to speak, from the other users?
TIA

[HansV]

That'd be difficult. You can mark text as hidden, but the user can specify in File > Options that hidden text will be displayed. You have no control over that.

I think the best you can do is to copy the text you want to remove/hide to another document and save that, as you are doing now. Then replace the text in the original document with placeholders, for example @@1, @@2, @@3 etc.
Later on, you can replace @@1 with the original text.

If you store the information like this:

S0184.png

it would be possible to restore it using a macro.

[Charles Kenyon]

If these are common pieces of information, used in multiple documents, they could be stored as AutoText in a Global Template. Then use an AutoText field to insert them in the document. To conceal them, attach a template with the blank AutoText entries with the same names and update the fields.

• http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/te ... htm#Global

• http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/au ... orrect.htm

• http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/te ... #hierarchy

Very unsecure, but, you can save strings in document variables rather than in a separate document. Document variables are totally invisible to most users but very accessible via vba or via the DocVariable field.

[Guessed]

This can be done by putting all personal information inside Content Controls and using an addin like Greg Maxey's https://gregmaxey.com/word_tip_pages/co ... tools.html to create a custom XML file and map the values in all those CCs to that content. A copy of that Custom XML file could then be saved onto your machine and the data in each of the mapped CCs removed before sending the file out to the external users.

When you receive the document back from them, you can restore that Custom XML file back into the document and the CCs will magically refill themselves with your protected information.

Macros could be applied to do the last couple of steps to make it easy to use.

[FrecklePaw]

Thanks everyone - I'll take a look at this a bit further :)