Whether you are a computer forensics examiner or a litigation support professional you should be aware of the hidden information inside Microsoft Word documents. Metadata is hidden data which reveals when a document was created, saved, printed, last 10 authors/locations and several other characteristics.

In a legal matter electronic files are considered evidence. It would stand to reason that metadata in Microsoft Word files is important since it can explain the timeline of events and other details related to the evidence.

All Microsoft Office documents contain metadata and there are dozens of other file types which also store valuable information about the file. These topics will be covered in a different article.

Many people think of emails when metadata is mentioned. It is important to note that the fields in an email (i.e. 'To', 'From', 'Subject' etc.) are actually database fields and not the same as the hidden information contained in other file types.

In addtion to Microsoft office Word metadata there is file system metadata. File system metadata is stored outside of the Microsoft Word.

File system metadata is independent of the Microsoft Office metadata and is stored in the FAT (File Allocation Table) which is similar to a table of contents for the operating system (i.e. .Microsoft Windows).

Spoliation in a legal case often refers to files where the file system metadata has been altered during the copy process.

Since the job of the collection phase is to preserve potential evidence spoliation can be a serious issue. Pinpoint Labs created a program called SafeCopy to allow users to copy files without altering metadata.

The folowing paragraph contains a list of the common metadata fields contained in a Microsof Word document.

MICROSOFT WORD METADATA FIELDS - File Name, Title, Author, Comments, App Name, Version Date, Created Date, Last Printed, Date Last Saved, Total Edit Time, Template, Shared, Subject, Category, Company, Keywords, Manager, Last Saved By, Word Count, Page Count, Paragraph Count, Line Count, Character Count, Chars, Byte Count, Presentation Format, Slide Count, Note Count, Hidden Slides, Multimedia Clips, Last 10 Authors, Routing Slip, Track Changes, Fast Saves, Hidden text, Graphics, Hyperlinks, Document Variables, Include Fields.

A program which can quickly display information related to file system and Microsoft Office metadata is available through Pinpoint Labs and is called MetaViewer. MetaViewer is a great tools for computer forensic examiners and legal professionals who need to quickly view metadata and hash values. You can download MetaViewer from the Pinpoint Labs website.