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  • (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share

    From HenHanna@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jun 10 13:19:39 2024
    XPost: alt.usage.english, sci.lang

    i'm a bit annoyed when People send me (MS Word) .doc files, because i must first convert them to .pdf before i can read them.


    TIL (Today I Learn) that .doc files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share:


    >>> people send them thinking they are sending text files...
    and wind up sending an awful lot of metadata .... (like the undo
    history). LibreOffice will read Word (.doc) files and let you export to
    text, pdf, or rtf formats which are safe to share.


    >>> university ... Vice-Chancellor who sent out "all staff"
    memos by e-mail in MS-Word format. ...
    .... composed them by taking an existing MS-Word file and altering
    the contents. He apparently didn't know about the "revision history" feature, ........ ended up leaking confidential documents.


    https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/244902/can-i-be-sure-a-word-document-is-safe-if-it-doesnt-have-macros

    >>> I am aware that MS Word documents can be potentially
    dangerous due to the executable macros contained within them.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 13 05:36:36 2024
    XPost: alt.usage.english, sci.lang

    On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:19:39 -0700, HenHanna <[email protected]>
    wrote:


    i'm a bit annoyed when People send me (MS Word) .doc files,
    because i must first convert them to .pdf before i can read them.


    TIL (Today I Learn) that .doc files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share:

    If you can't read them, then they are not unsafe.

    Sometimes they might have macros, but the macros would have no effect
    unless you read them with MS-Word, which you obviously aren't doing.

    >>> people send them thinking they are sending text files...
    and wind up sending an awful lot of metadata .... (like the undo
    history). LibreOffice will read Word (.doc) files and let you export to >text, pdf, or rtf formats which are safe to share.

    If I am sending people a document that I want them to add to or alter,
    I send it in RTF format, which most word processors can handle. If
    they just need to read it, then PDF is easier.

    >>> university ... Vice-Chancellor who sent out "all staff"
    memos by e-mail in MS-Word format. ...
    .... composed them by taking an existing MS-Word file and altering
    the contents. He apparently didn't know about the "revision history" >feature, ........ ended up leaking confidential documents.

    Yes, that is stupid.

    I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
    it as a faile attachment.


    --
    Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
    Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
    Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
    E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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  • From Peter Moylan@21:1/5 to Steve Hayes on Thu Jun 13 14:14:12 2024
    XPost: sci.lang, microsoft.public.word.newusers

    On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:

    I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
    it as a faile attachment.

    I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
    converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
    same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
    going to have to send it by snail mail.

    (Or perhaps it was rejected because my message was in plain text, with
    no HTML. I still haven't tracked down the precise cause.)

    Some mail providers are becoming tougher and tougher about rejecting
    mail for obscure reasons. (And sometimes they don't even tell the sender
    that the attempt failed.) Maybe we'll all have to go back to snail mail.

    --
    Peter Moylan [email protected] http://www.pmoylan.org
    Newcastle, NSW

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  • From Tilde@21:1/5 to Peter Moylan on Thu Aug 1 22:31:43 2024
    XPost: sci.lang, microsoft.public.word.newusers

    Peter Moylan wrote:
    On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:

    I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
    converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
    same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
    going to have to send it by snail mail.

    Came across this looking at some older posts.
    Something I've successfully used many times
    in the past is to simply change the file
    extension (to ".txt" for example) and let the
    recipient know to save it with the correct
    extension. If the mailer only looks at the
    file name this gets through. Have not had to
    do this for quite a while, so YMMV.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)