Hands on: Share Excel files without embarrassment

Before you share an Excel workbook with colleagues, you might prefer to remove the hidden data it contains, such as the dates the file was created and last modified. There may be hidden worksheets and rows or columns. You may want to eliminate personal identifiers that all current Office programs save.

They can lead to your name, email address or your computer’s IP address. If others contributed to your workbook ­ or it was based on someone else’s file ­ then their name would be saved. If your workbook has been previously saved to a document management server, details of that server would be included.

Fortunately, the latest version of Office includes a Document Inspector that will first detect all this hidden information and then offer you various options to remove it.
Try it with an existing Excel 2007 workbook. The first very important step is to make a copy of the file. The Document Inspector can make irreversible changes, so always work on a copy, not an original. You don’t want to be removing hidden columns that contain formulas on which visible cells depend, or removing all the footers and then changing your mind.

Click the Office button and then choose Prepare, Inspect Document. You may receive a warning to first save the document and another with a warning about macros. Click OK to both of those and the Document Inspector will be displayed. It offers seven types of hidden data it can find. All the types are checked by default. Click the Inspect button. For example, the Document Inspector may find comments, document property information and a hidden worksheet.

You now have a choice. You can click any of the individual Remove All buttons offered for each group or, preferably, go back to the workbook and review what the Document Inspector has found.

If comments are not displayed on your worksheets, go to Office, Excel Options, Advanced, Display and choose ‘Indicators only, and comments on hover’. To see regular document property information, choose Office, Prepare, Properties. To display hidden worksheets, right-click on any visible worksheet’s tab and choose Unhide.

There are some things the Document Inspector won’t remove, such as personal information you’ve included in your macros. On the other hand, it will remove metadata or information about the document that is not mentioned under Properties.
The Document Inspector is a great step forward.

At its most advanced level, it can help ensure your privacy. It is also a simple way of removing all your comments if you wish. And the name is a step forward from the days when Microsoft’s programmers had acne and called every built-in macro a wizard.