Inspect documents for issues - Microsoft Word Tutorial

- [Instructor] Before sharing or publishing a document, it's a good idea to have Word inspect the document to see if it contains document properties, objects that are not compatible with earlier versions of Word, or content that people with disabilities might find difficult to read. After watching this video, you'll know how to locate and remove hidden properties and personal information, and how to locate and correct accessibility issues and compatibility issues. Let's jump into our Inspect document and take a look at the information included in the document. In the header, we have the word Draft, that's definitely something that, if we were sharing a document, we would not want people to see. If I scroll down, I see that I also have information not only in the header but in the footer of the document. Let me see if we have any hidden information. I'll click on Show/Hide, let's scroll down, and we do have some text that is hidden within the document, and I can tell because it is underscored with dotted lines. We also have a comment regarding the high-speed internet access. And if I continue scrolling down, that appears to be everything in the document, but let's take a look at the properties. File and Info, we see that we have the title which is fine, we do have a tag in, we have a comment, this is a draft and not to be shared, probably don't want to share that information, and it also has the author's name and who it was last modified by. So by inspecting the document, Word will remove all of this property information as well as what we see in the headers and in the footers, comments in the document, and any hidden text. Let's go to File, and on our Info tab, Inspect Document will check for issues. These are our three options, Inspect Document, Check Accessibility, Check Compatibility. First, we'll inspect the document. We're prompted to save our changes because any changes that are made by the Document Inspector cannot be restored later, so I'll say Yes I want to go ahead and save the document. And here's our Document Inspector. Everything that is checked over on the left-hand side will be reviewed and if any information within these categories is found, it will be returned to us in the results. So comments, revisions, and version numbers, document properties, embedded documents, macros, headers, footers, and watermarks, invisible content, and hidden text. Let's click Inspect. Here are the results. Now anything that has a red exclamation point to the left means that Word found some of the information such as a comment that we had entered. I can go ahead and click Remove All, and it will take the comment out of the document. Next, it did find specific property and personal information, document properties, the author, and related dates, we'll remove that. It does have custom XML data, headers, footers, and watermarks, and hidden text. Let's have it Reinspect. And looking for those red exclamation points, I don't see any of that hidden information that was found in the inspection, so let's go ahead and close this Document Inspector window. And now as we scroll back through our document, we should see that our hidden text has been removed, all of our comments have been removed, as well as our headers and our footers. Let's go back to File and Inspect Document, and this time, let's check Accessibility. Your Accessibility Check is for content that people with disabilities might find difficult to read. So for example, if we've inserted objects such as Mr. Landon's photo and we have not entered alternate text and attached it to that object, if a person with a vision disability was having the document read to them, it would skip right over the photograph, and the person would not know that that object was in the document. So let's look at our inspection results. We're missing alternative text for picture 11. So I can click on that and it highlights the photograph of Mr. Landon. I can use the dropdown menu and add a description. Arthur Landon, Founder of the Landon Hotel. Now this description would be read by the reader as it passes by the photograph. Next, we have another object that's not in line, again, it's the photograph, so I can change the layout to In Line with the Text, so that again, as the reader goes through the document, it will see the photograph and move on down to the heading. Next, we have a warning about hard to read text contrast for the Landon Hotel. We should not use font colors that are close to the background of the document. So if I change this to a black font, now it would be easier for the reader to read. Let's go back to Inspect, and let's Check for Compatibility to see if we have any features that are not supported by earlier versions of Word. It's giving me the option to select a version, and it's going to look at shapes and text boxes and convert them to that particular version. There's one occurrence in this document, I'll go ahead and click OK, and now that issue has been taken care of. Now you know how to inspect all of your documents that you'll be sharing for hidden properties and personal information, accessibility issues, and compatibility issues.