The meta-data in a Word document can tell others more than you really want them to know. Tracked changes are a perfect example; especially in a legal environment, you may not want to tip your hand by letting others see edited or deleted text. Microsoft offers new tools in Word 2003 to help remove metadata, but according to a Cnet article, they don't go far enough.
You might think that converting a Word document to PDF would automatically remove all such things, but some information may still be passed along, depending upon your settings, so while such a conversion might help, it only does part of the job. Even the government has had difficulties with this concept, releasing PDF documents with easily viewed confidential data. As a result, the National Security Agency has provided step by step instructions designed to avoid such gaffes in their Document on Redaction.
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