Removing Metadata in your Excel Workbooks: Maintaining your privacy

Metadata is loosely defined as ‘data in data’. According to Microsoft Knowledge Base, metadata that is saved in your workbook includes the following

• Your name

• Your initials

• Your company or organization name

• The name of your computer

• The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the workbook

• Other file properties and summary information

• Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects

• Document revisions

• Hidden text or cells

• Personalized views

• Comments

This metadata might reveal unintended information which can be used against you. Hence, I decided to write on this topic even though it has nothing to do with VBA. You can view some of this information by right clicking on any file in windows explorer, select Properties>> (the) Summary (tab)>> Advanced.

Excel 2007 makes it easy to remove these information with the Document Inspector which you can access from Office Button>> Prepare>> Inspect Document. You can select the Properties option instead to see what information you are currently showing on your document.

The only information that you cannot edit from the Document Inspector is data on when you create, modify or access the file, which you can view from Office Button>> Prepare>> Properties>> Statistics. You can work around it by tweaking with your computer clock and saving the document as a new file.

For Excel 2003 and before:

How to minimize metadata in Microsoft Excel workbooks

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;223789

For Excel 2007:

Removing data and personal information for office documents

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100375931033.aspx

View or change the properties for an office document

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA100475241033.aspx

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