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(MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share

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  (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb> - 2024-06-10 13:19 -0700
    Re: (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> - 2024-06-13 05:36 +0200
      Re: (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> - 2024-06-13 14:14 +1000
        Re: (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> - 2024-06-13 07:56 +0200
        Re: (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> - 2024-08-01 22:31 -0600
        Re: (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share "HenHanna" <HenHanna@Posting.from.CsiPh> - 2026-06-01 19:33 +0000

#305333 — (MS Word) ".doc" files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share

       i'm a bit annoyed when People send me   (MS Word)  .doc    files, 
because i must first convert them to    .pdf    before i can read them.


TIL (Today I Learn) that  .doc   files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share:


         >>> people send them thinking they are sending text files... 
and wind up sending an awful lot of metadata .... (like the undo 
history).  LibreOffice will read Word (.doc) files and let you export to 
text, pdf, or rtf formats which are safe to share.


        >>>  university ...  Vice-Chancellor who sent out "all staff" 
memos by e-mail in MS-Word format. ...
   .... composed them by taking an existing MS-Word file and altering 
the contents.     He apparently didn't know about the "revision history" 
feature, ........  ended up leaking confidential documents.


https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/244902/can-i-be-sure-a-word-document-is-safe-if-it-doesnt-have-macros

       >>>  I am aware that MS Word documents can be potentially 
dangerous due to the executable macros contained within them.

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#305352

On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:19:39 -0700, HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb>
wrote:

>
>       i'm a bit annoyed when People send me   (MS Word)  .doc    files, 
>because i must first convert them to    .pdf    before i can read them.
>
>
>TIL (Today I Learn) that  .doc   files are (sometimes?) unsafe to share:

If you can't read them, then they are not unsafe. 

Sometimes they might have macros, but the macros would have no effect
unless you read them with MS-Word, which you obviously aren't doing. 

>         >>> people send them thinking they are sending text files... 
>and wind up sending an awful lot of metadata .... (like the undo 
>history).  LibreOffice will read Word (.doc) files and let you export to 
>text, pdf, or rtf formats which are safe to share.

If I am sending people a document that I want them to add to or alter,
I send it in RTF format, which most word processors can handle. If
they just need to read it, then PDF is easier. 

>        >>>  university ...  Vice-Chancellor who sent out "all staff" 
>memos by e-mail in MS-Word format. ...
>   .... composed them by taking an existing MS-Word file and altering 
>the contents.     He apparently didn't know about the "revision history" 
>feature, ........  ended up leaking confidential documents.

Yes, that is stupid. 

I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
it as a faile attachment. 


-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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#305353

On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:

> I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
>  it as a faile attachment.

I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
going to have to send it by snail mail.

(Or perhaps it was rejected because my message was in plain text, with
no HTML. I still haven't tracked down the precise cause.)

Some mail providers are becoming tougher and tougher about rejecting
mail for obscure reasons. (And sometimes they don't even tell the sender
that the attempt failed.) Maybe we'll all have to go back to snail mail.

-- 
Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

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#305354

On 2024-06-13 04:14:12 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

> On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:
> 
>> I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
>> it as a faile attachment.

That's essentially what I do.
> 
> I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
> converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
> same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
> going to have to send it by snail mail.
> 
> (Or perhaps it was rejected because my message was in plain text, with
> no HTML. I still haven't tracked down the precise cause.)
> 
> Some mail providers are becoming tougher and tougher about rejecting
> mail for obscure reasons. (And sometimes they don't even tell the sender
> that the attempt failed.) Maybe we'll all have to go back to snail mail.

A few days ago I had a message rejected because it exceeded the size 
limit. However, they didn't think it helpful to say what the limit was. 
A day or two later a message with a 13 megabyte attachment was rejected 
(by the same mail server) but they didn't bother to tell me at all; it 
just didn't arrive.

Other recent messages didn't because (probably) some servers don't like 
messages with more than some limit (3?) of recipients. Again, they 
don't bother to tell you that.

A few years ago I had a message to rejected by mail system of the 
University of Chile because the subject line contained "Hi". Hi? No, 
but the subject line was something like "Forthcoming visit to Chile", 
and "Chile" contains the string "hi".

Sorry, this message says nothing relevant to sci.lang, but then neither 
did any of the other contributions to this thread (started by someone 
who never has anything relevant to say).
-- 
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly 
in England until 1987.

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#306139

Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:

> I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
> converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
> same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
> going to have to send it by snail mail.

Came across this looking at some older posts.
Something I've successfully used many times
in the past is to simply change the file
extension (to ".txt" for example) and let the
recipient know to save it with the correct
extension. If the mailer only looks at the
file name this gets through. Have not had to
do this for quite a while, so YMMV.

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#308522

     This must be a thread that I started.



Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
> On 13/06/24 13:36, Steve Hayes wrote:
> 
> > I send all emails in plain text, and if formatting is needed, I send
> >  it as a faile attachment.
> 
> I recently had to send a document to my uncle and a cousin, so I
> converted it to PDF first. It turned out that their mail provider (the
> same provider in both cases) rejected mail with a PDF attachment. I'm
> going to have to send it by snail mail.


         interesting !!!

> 
> (Or perhaps it was rejected because my message was in plain text, with
> no HTML. I still haven't tracked down the precise cause.)
> 
> Some mail providers are becoming tougher and tougher about rejecting
> mail for obscure reasons. (And sometimes they don't even tell the sender
> that the attempt failed.) Maybe we'll all have to go back to snail mail.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org
> Newcastle, NSW

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