Metadata removal

If you want to remove metadatas from pictures you must do that before inserting them in Pages.

A tool like GraphicConvert may be useful to do that.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 14 mars 2009 20:44:49)

I think that should be Graphic Converter X:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/263

How can one remove metadata from a Pages document?

The same way that you would reliably remove the metadata from an MS Word document -- don't send the document in its native form.

From the Print dialog in Pages, choose Save as PDF, then send the PDF document to your intended recipients.

Apparently there is some reason you cannot employ a PDF version of the target document. While meta-data removal is a big issue with MS documents, I'd be interested to know whether (and to what extent) there needs to be a similar concern with other oft-used WP or publishing applications.

I'm curious, too. I know with just about any word.doc you take a look at, you can find path and file names of the sender's computer... can be telling to some degree!

But, I don't know if similar information is stored in Pages files.

Kyn,

I've used AppleWorks, NisusWriter, WordPerfect, MarinerWrite, and Pages, and I have never found any meaningful "loose" meta-data like when I open an MS Word file in a pure text editor. Outside of MS Word, the notion of "scrubbing" a document was never a concern.

Ah, I thought so. Likely something due to some legacy "whatever" they're trying to maintain compatibility with.

From the way you have posed your question I am assuming that you are saving your Pages document in MS Word format. I am not aware of any desktop tool to remove metadata from a Pages document but you can use the tool 3BClean to remove unwanted metadata.

3BClean is delivered as a service and does not require any software on your desktop. It removes metadata from MS Office, OpenOffice.org and PDF document formats.

You can trial it out for free:
- on a per document basis at http://trial.3bview.com/3BTrial/pages/clean.jsp, or
- for automatic removal of metadata as a document is emailed / enquiry@3bview.com

hope this helps
Paul

Brie Fly wrote:

How can one remove metadata from a Pages document?

The same way that you would reliably remove the metadata from an MS Word document -- don't send the document in its native form.

From the Print dialog in Pages, choose Save as PDF, then send the PDF document to your intended recipients.

Eh... PDF files also contain meta data. The kind of data that is embedded depends on how you create the file. Open a PDF file in Adobe Reader and check the file info, to see what meta data is present.

Metadata is present in ALL electronic files not just office (word processing, spreadsheets etc) files. However most of the headline hitters have been caused by word processing files. Metadata is there for a reason and it depends on how feature rich the word processor you use is to how much information is stored 'behind the scenes': a MS Word or WordPerfect file will have a large amount of such hidden information where as WordPad, RTF files or the like will have a smaller amount.

See also my response to the PDF specific sub thread below.

Totally agree re PDF and metadata. Just take a look at how Google got caught out last year by just such metadata: http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/google-exposed-as-anonymous-ebay-critic/20 08/05/30/1211654272331.html?page=fullpage

In this day and age even documents with less rich metadata than the likes of MS Word and WordPerfect poses a risk of unintentional leaks of confidential/sensitive information as soon as they are sent or 'published'.

Note: (additional chortles were heard from the IT community on this) that the submission also exposed an additional embarrassment in that they used MS Word rather than their own Google apps.