Project documents are normally reused from one project to another within a company, and often for different clients. While this saves some time as opposed to starting something from scratch, but the risk of exposing sensitive information from other projects is high if we do not check in greater detail before reusing a document.
Based on my experience, here are the three very important steps to take when you want to reuse an existing project document for another new project:
Erase previous customer sensitive data
Check thoroughly and ensure that all previous customer sensitive data such as IP addresses and financial information are deleted and replaced with the correct data for the current project that you’re working on.
Replace the footer and header
Check every page and ensure that the footer and header containing the previous project information are deleted and replaced with the current project information. This could include the document title or company/project logo.
Update the document properties
Document properties include information such as the title of the document, the company name, author name, etc. This can be updated for any MS Office file. To do this, click the File tab, select Info and under Properties, click the tiny arrow to open Advanced Properties.
Update with the correct information and click OK.
That’s all you have to do to avoid potential confusion and/or information being misused in a project document. Do you have other ideas on what else could have been done better when reusing a project document? Let me know in the comment below!
