The "secret stuff" that others can see - that articles of the kind cited are talking about - are the revision record and annotations commonly used when several people in a work group are passing the document back and forth, making revisions and editing changes to be routed for approval by others.

In order to have such "secret stuff" in a Word document, you must go to Tools|Track Revisions to turn on the identification of changes made by each person. If you have NOT TURNED ON "TRACK REVISIONS" in Tools, there is nothing for anyone to see.

(If you're not smart informed enough to know how to turn it off, you probably haven't turned it on so you have nothing to worry about.)

When turned on, entries made by each "reviewer" are shown in a different color. "Deletes" are shown by strikeout rather than being removed, and additions are shown in the "color" of the person who makes them.

A reader who opens the document and does not have "Track Revisions" turned on, and/or does not have the "Revisions" toolbar displayed, will usually see only the "latest version" although there are some "peculiarities" with the way a "tracked" document with lots of revs and notes displays. A person who receives what looks like a "clean" document can turn on the Revisions toolbar and step through all the changes that have been made since tracking was turned on. Reviewers may also have added notes/comments which will also be visible.

All that's required to remove all of this "history" is to click on the Revisions tool bar to go to the first change/note, and you should find an option to "Accept All" that will merge all prior changes and delete all the notes.

If several people have worked, in Rev Tracking mode, on the document, and have added "conflicting edits," this can make total garbage out of a perfectly good document; but unless you've "shared the job" of creating the document and have told Word to keep track of the changes there is no record of the revisions you've made in the document.

If you have not turned on "Track Revisions" there will be nothing for anyone to see in a new document that you have created "from scratch."

Go to View | Toolbars, and put a check beside the "Revisions" toolbar. You'll then see a (probably new) toolbar in the top bar with 7 buttons on it, most of which will probably be yellow, with blue arrows and stuff on them. The first couple of "arrow" buttons step forward and back from one "change" to the next. The button with the check mark on it is the one you click to accept a single change you or someone else has entered. You can click the roller arrow on this button to get the choice to "Accept All." Once you click that choice, there is NO RECORD OF THE PAST HISTORY OF THE CHANGES MADE IN THE DOCUMENT.

The sixth button from the left on my Revisions toolbar toggles "Track Changes" on or off. If Tracking is on, the button shows as "depressed."

At the left, there is a "Show" window where you can choose to show the Final, Final showing markup, Original showing markup, or the Original. The "Show" roller allows some selection of how the various markups are displayed.

An immensely handy and powerful tool for group preparation and review of a document. NONE OF WHAT IT TRACKS should ever be in a Word document unless someone turned on the tracking feature. One click on the "Accept All" button clears all of it out.

John