• Hi All

    Please note that at the Chandoo.org Forums there is Zero Tolerance to Spam

    Post Spam and you Will Be Deleted as a User

    Hui...

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Remove Hidden Data

For items posted online, you would prefer to use:

  • Real full name

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • First Name only

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Screen name / Nickname

    Votes: 4 50.0%
  • Just as "Anonymous"

    Votes: 1 12.5%

  • Total voters
    8

Luke M

Excel Ninja
Staff member
If anyone else is like me and what to try and make sure you remove hidden data such as your real name, company, etc., this thread is for you. :)

Microsoft has attempted to address the issue with several features. In 2003, it was a downloadable add-in. For 2007 and 2010, you can use the Document Inspector.

With the latter, it takes several annoying button clicks to get to where I want, and it also gives the option to removing hidden rows/columns/comments, which are things that I often want Excel to leave as is. I'm mostly worries about the document properties and stuff.

That said, I also tend to upload a lot of examples for people, and so create this macro and put it in my Personal workbook. I then put a button on my Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) so I could quickly clean and prepare my documents.

Here's the macro:
Code:
Sub PrepChandoo()
'What is your screen name?
Const myName = "Luke M"
Dim props As DocumentProperties

With ActiveWorkbook
'Clear any previous values
    On Error Resume Next
    For i = 1 To .BuiltinDocumentProperties.Count
        .BuiltinDocumentProperties(i).Value = ""
    Next
    On Error GoTo 0
   
    'Setup the values for Chandoo
    'Customize as desired
    .BuiltinDocumentProperties("Title") = "Chandoo example file"
    .BuiltinDocumentProperties("Subject") = "Example file"
    .BuiltinDocumentProperties("Author") = myName
    .BuiltinDocumentProperties("Company") = "http://chandoo.org/forum/"
    'Puts a date Stamp
    .BuiltinDocumentProperties("Comments") = "This file created by " & myName & " for the Chandoo community on " & Format(Date, "dd-mmm-yyyy")
End With
End Sub

Obviously, you should change the myName constant to suit yourself. There's other document properties you can modify (look at the VB help properties for BuiltinDocumentProperties), but I felt these were sufficient.

If anyone else has addtional information about preparing documents for sharing, please let me know. :)
 
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