"Do you want to Merge Changes?"

If you use Outlook 2002 and Word 2002 you may have encountered a message along the lines of "Do you want to merge changes?" when opening a document attached to an email. Have you ever wondered why this message appears?

Did you know you may be unknowingly embedding your email address and other personal information in Office documents you attach to an Outlook email?

One of the new "features" of Outlook 2002 is to automatically add Reviewing data to every Office document you attach to an email. This could be an Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation, or Word document.

How it Works
When you create an email in Outlook 2002 and attach an Office document, Outlook adds the following to the File Properties (Custom tab):

_AdHocReviewCycleID
_EmailSubject
_EmailAuthor
_EmailAuthorDisplayName

This information is added to the File Properties without your knowledge and is saved with the document you are sending.
If you receive a Word document you previously sent as an attachment in an email either from another email, on a floppy, local drive, network drive, etc, upon opening the document in Word you will be presented with a message similar to the following image:

• If you choose to merge changes and answer Yes, Word will merge the original document into the copy of the document you are opening. This is similar to using the Compare and Merge Documents command found under the Tools menu. All modifications between the two documents are marked as revisions and the Reviewing toolbar is turned on.
  
  
• If you choose not to merge changes and answer No, the documents are not merged; however, the Custom File Properties will remain and you will be prompted to merge changes each time you open the document.
  
  
• If you choose not to merge changes and answer No, and don't ask again, the documents are not merged and the Custom File Properties are removed.
  

This may all sound okay on paper but in the real world this doesn't work so well. Not to mention how incredibly annoying it could be—and there is the issue of personal information stored in the Office documents without the sender's knowledge.

Word documents are the only Office documents in which you could encounter the merge changes message but Outlook adds the Custom Properties to Excel and PowerPoint files as well.

So what's the problem you ask? The concern here isn't with the individual you may send the attachments to; the problem is with third parties who may view the documents.

Take, for example, a company manager who works on Office documents at home. The easiest way to send files to the office is via email. The manager uses his/her personal email address to send the documents to work and those documents are then distributed throughout the workplace.

This, in turn, distributes the manager's personal and confidential home email address throughout the company and he may suddenly find his home email address on every mailing list imaginable thanks to one disgruntled employee.

How to Turn Automatic Review Off
Luckily this option can be disabled by opening Outlook and performing the following steps:

1. Click Tools in the menu bar
2. Then select Options
3. On the Preferences tab click E-mail options…
4. Then click Advanced E-mail options…
5. At the bottom disable Add properties to attachments to enable Reply with Changes

For those who may need to push this change to their users the option is stored in the Registry at:

HCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Options\Mail\AdHocReviewBehavior

Can I Still Send Documents for Review?
Turning the option off in Outlook doesn't mean you are unable to take advantage of this feature in Word when you actually want to send a document for review.

In those situations you can send the document from Word by using the Send to Mail Recipient (for Review) command found under the File menu.

Additionally, this method only adds a ReviewCycleID to Custom File Properties. Your email address, email subject, etc, are not added.

Removing Custom AdHoc Review File Properties
To manually remove Custom Review Properties from an Office document perform the following steps:

1. Open the Office document
2. Click File in the menu bar
3. Then click Properties
4. Select the Custom tab
5. Select each property you wish to remove and click Delete

Acknowledgements
This article was brought to you by the collaborative effort of several individuals in the Microsoft newsgroups. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Update!
Changing the option in Outlook will only affect new email attachments. However you can clear the list of AdHocReview files by locating: AdHoc.rcd and either rename it or delete it.

The Custom File Properties will still be present in the document(s) but the annoying Merge Changes message should no longer appear.