Not to mention the fact that some information displayed on the Statistics tab, such as the last user who saved the document, can't be deleted manually. In addition, there's hidden data in each document that just cannot be manually deleted.

For Office 2003/XP, Microsoft offered an add-in called Remove Hidden Data to accomplish this task. In Office 2007, Microsoft introduced the Document Inspector, a feature which takes care of removing hidden metadata from an Office 2007 document.

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To access this feature in an Office 2007 application, click on the Office icon, Prepare, and then click Inspect Document. You'll have the option to select or deselect various options for inspection, such as Document Properties and Personal Information, and Hidden Text. Once the inspection is complete, you'll have the option to remove the items you want.

In Excel 2007, there are seven items that can be inspected and removed, including Hidden Worksheets, Hidden Rows and Columns, and Invisible Content. Other applications in Office 2007 offer different options.

One thing to keep in mind: Make sure that you save the original version of the document before you save a version that has the hidden data removed, in case you need to display that data for certain users or for yourself.