What's the purpose of document properties

[Chicago48]

I teach Office 2007/2010 and I cannot for the life of me understand the purpose of document properties. Is this a collaborative feature? And you use it in practicality?

 

[Taul]

its useful for "File Search" by property.
property features like "Project", or "User" and "keywords".

 

[SydneyGeek]

Each Document Property is unique for the file that holds it. Apart from searching you can use properties to store database passwords, for mail merges, and if you use the cover pages that come in the Quick Parts section of Word 2007/2010, the headings on those cover pages use document properties.

I used to ignore them for every application except Project and Visio; still don't use them all the time, but they do have their uses.

Denis

 

[Taul]

I must admit, whenever I register a microsoft product, I register as "User" at "Home" just so my personal details are excluded from the document properties. It doesn’t affect getting the updates for the product.
Ok I know they can be changed afterwards but I'm paranoid ... in a nice sort of way.

If you now find yourself checking a recent file you generated to see what personal info you just sent someone, then you are mildly paranoid too, ..... also in a nice sort of way.

As far as searching for files using the file properties, although it’s useful it's just as easy to search for a word contained in the file because I know that nobody ever uses/fills-in the properties information.
.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Like you, I don't tend to fill in the standard properties. Life's too short.
However:
1. In 2010 (and I think 2007) you can strip identifying information from documents before distributing them and
2. As I said, there are some useful things that you can do with doc properties in code. I mainly use them for automating merges to Word templates from Access.

Denis

 

[RoryA]

I've used them for tagging workbooks that should be monitored by a particular add-in before.

 

[PaddyD]

One possible use:

If you work for a large organisation (and assuming your programming skills aren't up solving the problem), you should get into the habit of opening and saving a blank version of each of the major document types every day. Store them in a directory called "audit proofing'.

Then, if you ever need to generate a "missing" document that you really should have produced some time in the past, you can simply go back to the doc for that day and start from there. The document properties will demonstrate to the naive auditor that the document was indeed created on the day you said it was and potential audit problem avoided / **** covered