How in the Tech

Protect your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint history

By Adam Myers ⋅ February 5, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Microsoft Office, Privacy

Microsoft Office has a feature that maintains a list of recently viewed documents within the applications of the suite. From a usability perspective this is quite handy as the odds of you needing access to a recent document is quite high – and they are just a few clicks away now. However from a security and privacy perspective, this situation is a nightmare. It’s not unfathomable to find many reasons where this information should remain hidden, if not completely wiped altogether. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not provide the means to accomplish this easily.

eSecure provides an Office add-in, appropriately titled eSecure Office ad-in, that aids in maintaining some privacy when you are working on those highly classified documents. The add-in, once installed, adds an additional option to the Office application ribbon that allows for easy deletion of your viewable document history. With one click your history and cookies are wiped – all from within the Office application itself.

eSecure Office ad-in is available for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint and is a separate install for each. Of note, the add-in is compatible with Office 2007 and 2010 only.