Remove Properties and Personal Information

users
#1

Hello list,

I am having difficulty getting the "Remove Properties and Personal
Information" link to work on the Properties>Details tab for a specific file
that I would like to remove all personal information from

When I click this link, I get a pop up box that that has two radio
buttons. One radio button is: "Create a copy with all possible properties
removed". I selected that one and clicked OK.

Then another box pops up that says "You need permission to perform this
action. You require permission from Joe-PC\Joe to make changes to this
file."

I click "Try again" and eventually it fails and says:

"Not all personal properties were cleared. Windows was unable to remove
properties from the new copies of the selected files. Before sharing these
files, you should review them for unwanted personal information."

I realize this is much more a Windows 7 problem than a LibreOffice problem,
but so was my last question :slight_smile:

What I've tried so far:
1.Properties>Security tab>Edit.
In the box for "Group or user names", I select Joe(Joe-PC\Joe). In the box
below, "Permissions for Joe", all items are checked as "Allow", except for
"Special permissions".

I click the "Edit" button.

A new window pops up with just the Security tab showing. The top box shows
"Group or user names". I select Joe(Joe-PC\Joe).

The bottom box below says "Permissions for Joe". All of the permissions
have a check box in the "Allow" column. Additionally, all of the allow
check boxes are grayed out. Only the Deny checkboxes are check-able. The
"Special Permissions" box is the only box that does not have a check in
either Allow or Deny. Both of the Special Permissions boxes are grayed out.

So my question boils down to, How do I get the "Special Permissions" box in
the Security tab to be check-able?

2. Properties>Security tab>Advanced.
In the Security tab, there is text at the bottom that says "For special
permissions or advanced settings, click Advanced." I click the Advanced
button.

A new windows pups up "Advanced Security Settings for File foo.bar". On
the Permissions tab, there is a box for "Permission entries". There are 3
entries: SYSTEM, Administrators(Joe-PC\Administrators), Joe(Joe-PC\Joe).
The Permission for all three is "Full Control".

It would seem to me that if I have Full Control permission, then the
Special Permission check box should be check-able (not grayed out), but
it's not check-able, and it is grayed out. What am I missing?

Thank you so much for your help

Joe

#2

I realize this is much more a Windows 7 problem than a LibreOffice problem,
but so was my last question :slight_smile:

​It's not a "more W7 than LO" problem, it's a "W7 only" problem...​

It would seem to me that if I have Full Control permission, then the

Special Permission check box should be check-able (not grayed out), but
it's not check-able, and it is grayed out. What am I missing?

​The NTFS rights management. You can have full control over a file, but
can't do everything. You can be the "administrator" user, and not have full
control. You can be the owner of a file, and still be unable to modify it.
You can give *all* rights to the "Everyone" virtual user, and still not be
able to access the file without an user account on the system.

The worst thing is, I'm not joking here, these things are real. The only
option as far as I know is to effectively give yourself extra rights either
through all the dialogs madness or with the "icacls" command line tool.
Both methods are overly tedious in my opinion, but that's just the way it
is.

#3

Thank you for your reply Cley.

The icacls command is new to me, but I have a general idea what it does now.

Let's say the file I'm trying to to change is "C:\Users\Joe\Desktop\foo.txt"

The command line I have tried so far is

C:\Users\Joe>icacls "C:\Users\Joe\Desktop\foo.txt" /grant Joe-PC\Joe:F

Of course, the F permission is "Full Access" which I already have. I am
just showing what I have already tried.

How might I modify this statement to include "special permissions"?

Thank you
Joe

#4

​Sorry, I can't help you further with the windows command line tools, as I
don't use them very often.​
​What you can try is to set the appropriate permissions on a file through
the GUI, and then run icacls on it without arguments. This should show you
the current file permissions per user, and can give you the info you need.
As far as I remember, icacls is good to manage the "generic" access
properties, but can also show information about extended metadata, which
might be what you need there.

#5

Joe B wrote:

Hello list,

I am having difficulty getting the "Remove Properties and Personal
Information" link to work on the Properties>Details tab for a specific file
that I would like to remove all personal information from

When I click this link, I get a pop up box that that has two radio
buttons. One radio button is: "Create a copy with all possible properties
removed". I selected that one and clicked OK.

Then another box pops up that says "You need permission to perform this
action. You require permission from Joe-PC\Joe to make changes to this
file."

I click "Try again" and eventually it fails and says:

"Not all personal properties were cleared. Windows was unable to remove
properties from the new copies of the selected files. Before sharing these
files, you should review them for unwanted personal information."

I realize this is much more a Windows 7 problem than a LibreOffice problem,
but so was my last question :slight_smile:

What I've tried so far:
1.Properties>Security tab>Edit.

Be careful arbitrarily messing about with the permissions. Adding more "Allow" permissions should be fairly safe, but if you start removing permissions or setting "Deny" permissions, you can end up making it difficult to regain access to the files! If that happens, taking ownership should be able to sort it out, although I'm not sure even that would help if you've explicitly denied yourself permission to set the file's permissions...

In the box for "Group or user names", I select Joe(Joe-PC\Joe). In the box
below, "Permissions for Joe", all items are checked as "Allow", except for
"Special permissions".

"Special Permissions" is an indication in that basic settings dialog that a combination of options has been selected in the advanced dialog which doesn't correspond to any of the other basic options ("Full control", "Modify", etc.) Since you have all permissions, this corresponds to "Full control" and is not a "special" combination.

I click the "Edit" button.

A new window pops up with just the Security tab showing. The top box shows
"Group or user names". I select Joe(Joe-PC\Joe).

The bottom box below says "Permissions for Joe". All of the permissions
have a check box in the "Allow" column. Additionally, all of the allow
check boxes are grayed out. Only the Deny checkboxes are check-able. The
"Special Permissions" box is the only box that does not have a check in
either Allow or Deny. Both of the Special Permissions boxes are grayed out.

They're greyed out because the permissions are inherited from a higher-level folder. You can't remove the "Allow" permissions, but you can explicitly select to "Deny" them (don't do that unless you know what you're doing!)

So my question boils down to, How do I get the "Special Permissions" box in
the Security tab to be check-able?

"Special Permissions" is not explicitly selectable, because it indicates an arbitrary combination of advanced options.

2. Properties>Security tab>Advanced.
In the Security tab, there is text at the bottom that says "For special
permissions or advanced settings, click Advanced." I click the Advanced
button.

A new windows pups up "Advanced Security Settings for File foo.bar". On
the Permissions tab, there is a box for "Permission entries". There are 3
entries: SYSTEM, Administrators(Joe-PC\Administrators), Joe(Joe-PC\Joe).
The Permission for all three is "Full Control".

Here you have finer-grained control of the permissions. Selecting, for example, "Read" in the basic settings corresponds to "List folder...", "Read attributes", "Read extended attributes" and "Read permissions" in this advanced settings dialog. If you were to select only, say, "Read permissions" here and go back to the basic permissions dialog, you'd find that "Special permissions" is selected (and greyed out since it doesn't correspond to a specific combination of options to be added/removed).

Of course, if you're looking at inherited permissions here they'll be greyed out as above. It's probably best not to remove the option to include inheritable permissions, unless you know what you're doing and need to do that for some reason.

It would seem to me that if I have Full Control permission, then the
Special Permission check box should be check-able (not grayed out), but
it's not check-able, and it is grayed out. What am I missing?

Hopefully the above explanations help. Windows' help (accessed by clicking links in the lower left of the dialogs) seems quite good when it comes to explaining the permissions, and how the basic options map onto combinations of the advanced options. Or at least it is on Windows Vista; I'd hope it's at least as good in 7.

Thank you so much for your help

Joe

I hope that helps clarify. Similar options exist in Windows XP, but most home users aren't aware of them because they create all users as administrators who can access everything.

The various combinations of permissions can get quite complicated, particularly when it comes to inheritance and "deny" permissions, but there isn't usually any need to change them. About the only time I've ever modified them is to allow other users access to certain files and folders, and if you're not confident with editing permissions there are easier ways to achieve that - right-click and select "Share...". Don't think I've ever used any of the "deny" options, but then I haven't done anything more than setting up a PC for the family.

Mark.