Distributing Microsoft word documents is a bad idea. They contain all sorts hidden information including information about paste edits, placeholders, and other assorted things that can lead to major embarrassment if other people were to see it. When I need to distribute a word document, I usually convert it to PDF and send that instead.

But there are times when you need to send out an actual Word document. Maybe you need people to make edits. Also when submitting resumes many employers ask for submissions in Word format (talk about a place where you don't want people to see embarrassing stuff). In those cases there is a program you can use that will "scrub" out all of the stuff that Microsoft hides in your documents.

It's called Doc Scrubber. It's free and it works on most versions of Windows. It lets you see all of the hidden information in your document (which is very interesting in it's own right) and it then allows you to remove it so that it's safe to share your documents with other people.