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I have created word document (*.doc or .docx) or excel documents (.xls or *.xlsx).

Sometime, these documents need to be sent to some customer and therefore require personal information to be removed from these documents.

Are there ways to configure Microsoft Word and/or Microsoft Excel to stop inserting personal information to the documents?

This is because if I have 100 documents (in different folders and of different type - Word and Excel), I will need to click the Remove Properties and Personal Information for each file in different folders.

I want to configure Microsoft Word and/or Microsoft Excel such that all new files (word or excel documents) will no longer require me to manual remove the properties and personal information.

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Not quite sure this is possible as a default setting. You can remove the properties with a macro. You could store a macro into the Word Normal template and create the Excel personal workbook.

I often need to remove the personal information from files and I have an Excel macro in my personal macro workbook that goes like this:

Option Explicit

Sub RemoveProperties()
    ActiveWorkbook.RemoveDocumentInformation (xlRDIDocumentProperties)
    ActiveWorkbook.Save
End Sub

The same for Word looks like this

Option Explicit

Sub RemoveProperties()
    ActiveDocument.RemoveDocumentInformation (wdRDIDocumentProperties)
    ActiveDocument.Save
End Sub

I've added buttons to the QATs of Word and Excel with an eraser icon. The button runs these macros on individual files. When I need to remove the properties of a file, I just click the button in the QAT.

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  • That macro is good but then I will still have to remember to click that button in order to activate the macro to remove the Properties and Personal information. I would prefer a solution that I configure once and forever, such that future new files will not have personal information inside it. However, I appreciate your answer for sharing that we can use macro to perform such action.
    – Jack
    Apr 18, 2013 at 10:11
  • There is not setting in Office to suppress document properties, AFAIK. The only automation way is with VBA. You can run a macro when a new file is created. But when the new file is saved, the properties will be populated. In order to clear the properties via macro, the macro would have to reside in the file itself. That means that each Word doc or Excel macro would have to be a macro-enabled file. That is probably not a viable scenario. Out of the box, all files have properties. If you want to remove them, you need to do that one at a time, as required.
    – teylyn
    Apr 18, 2013 at 10:30

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