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I've had a look through the related questions and this doesn't seem to be answered anywhere else.

On Windows 10, I've found that C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Packages\oice_<[a-z0-9]>\AC\Temp\ contains some Word, Excel and PDF documents of mine which are confidential, despite having run Disc Cleanup and deleting all recently opened docs in Word and Excel. Since this is a Work laptop, I'd like to delete them.

  • I assume I can delete this folder since it's a Temp one?
  • Are there likely to be any other locations where my documents are lurking?
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    Might be time to turn on Bitlocker docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/device-security/bitlocker/… if you are worried since different applications may be sticking things in various places. Windows 10 Store Apps seem to use AppData hierarchy for data storage but there are a lot of older programs about. My university is now requiring Bitlocker be turned on for laptops and tablets and desktop PCs.
    – Richard Chambers
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 1:14
  • Looks good! But I'm only a user, not a member of IT staff...
    – ChrisW
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 1:17
  • If you are really worried, you can DBAN the hard drive and have your admins reinstall Windows. We cannot guess where all the temp files might exist on your PC. So you have to encrypt or overwrite ALL the data (the whole harddrive) to be completely safe. If this is an issue, then you probably should not have put your confidential info on the machine. Just "deleting" the files only marks them for deletion. They are still there till overwritten. Just look up Recuva for proof. I just don't want you to be misinformed.
    – Musselman
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 1:49
  • Just delete the files. They are in a local temporary folder likely created when you opened them from within another program (i.e a url to them)
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 2:28

1 Answer 1

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First, you can search the whole drive for any files created or modified at the same time that you open, modify and/or save an Office document. You may need to force Windows to search within the User and Program Data folders by explicitly selecting them.

N.B. If you use Windows File History, previous versions of files are stored on your PC. These should be encrypted.

In addition to he Office temporary files, if files are compressed, utilities such as WinZip or 7-Zip make temporary copies on extraction. This can be a security issue for encrypted documents. 7-Zip specifies that location in Options | Folders.

Once you establish which folders are used for temporary files, you can add them to a cleanup utility such as CCleaner.

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