Method and application for removing material from documents for external sources

A computer program product embodied on a computer readable medium and executable by a computer for generating a sanitized document, the computer program product comprising computer instructions for executing the steps of:

• obtaining a draft document, the draft document including restricted information and unrestricted information;
• reviewing the draft document to identify the restricted information in the draft document;
• tagging the identified restricted information in the draft document to generate a tagged document, wherein the tagged restricted information in the tagged document is distinguishable from the unrestricted information and untagged restricted information in the tagged document;
• processing the tagged document to generate a sanitized document and a log file from the tagged document, the sanitized document including the unrestricted information and untagged restricted information, and the log file including the tagged restricted information;
• and
• storing the tagged document, the sanitized document and the log file in a database, the tagged document, the sanitized document and the log file stored in the database being accessible by a plurality of users to provide to an external source.

A system for generating a sanitized document, the system comprising:

• a server computer, the server computer comprising a storage device and a processor;
• a database, the database being accessible by the server computer;
• a sanitization application to remove preselected information from a document for an external source, the sanitization application being stored in the storage device of the server computer, the sanitization application further comprising:
• means for editing the document to designate the preselected information in the document;
• means for generating an issued document from the edited document, the issued document being stored in the database and including both marked preselected information and other information;
• means for generating a sanitized document from the edited document, the sanitized document being stored in the database and omitting the marked preselected information;
• means for generating a log file from the edited document, the log file being stored in the database and including the marked preselected information;
• and
• means for retrieving the sanitized document and the log file from the database, the retrieved sanitized document and log file being providable to an external source;
• and
• at least one client computer in communication with said server computer, the sanitization application being accessible on said at least one client computer.