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I have some excel files and need to determine the original creator. On a PC I can check the properties of the excel file, but I want to know if there is something on a linux computer to do this.

Update: I found this exiftool which can read and display the metadata of both .xls and .xlsx excel files. It is available in major linux distribution repos.

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  • How about installing Excel on Linux under Wine? Then do anything like you do in excel on a PC.
    – elomage
    Feb 4, 2014 at 10:13

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You can use the file utility. On a terminal, just type in file <filename> and it will show you all details about that file. The "Author" tag will also be included. Example ::

[root@xxxxx ~]$file MOM_Date\ Template.xls
MOM_Date Template.xls: Composite Document File V2 Document, Little Endian, Os: Windows, Version 6.1, Code page: 1252, Author: XXXXXX, Last Saved By: XXXXXX, Create Time/Date: Tue Jan 14 08:18:57 2014, Last Saved Time/Date: Wed Jan 29 09:15:43 2014, Security: 0

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  • What about xlsx files?
    – noir
    Feb 3, 2014 at 6:37
  • It will show details for any files. It reads the file header, so it should work just the same with xlsx. Go ahead and give it a try.
    – Stark07
    Feb 3, 2014 at 6:38
  • I just tried and it gave only "Microsoft Excel 2007+". But from your answer I found another tool exiftool, which extracted the detailed information. Thank you anyway.
    – noir
    Feb 3, 2014 at 6:52
  • Oh. My bad. I guess the tool was unable to read the header for xlsx.
    – Stark07
    Feb 3, 2014 at 6:55

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