The Document Inspector in Excel 07

Document Inspector

You can inspect your document to see what kind of information is associated with your Workbook.

1. Comments and Annotations
     a. If you have used any collaboration tools (we will talk about these later) it will check for this        information. Such as Comments, Track Changes.
2. Document Properties and
Personal Information a. Document properties also known as Metadata (Data about data. Such as the Author of the document, the date that the document was created, and the location on a computer or network that the document was created).
3. Custom XML Data
     a. XML (Extensible Markup Language, a form of code that the newer versions of Microsoft Office use that is Human readable and Machine readable. It serves to decrease the file size and reduce the possibility of corruption of the newer files that are created.) There are some portions of this that the file does not really need for the operation of the file and it can be removed without degrading the file in any way.
4. Headers and Footers
     a. Information saved in the Header and Footer Sections you can remove here.
5. Hidden Rows and Columns
     a. If you have hidden Rows or Columns that no one should see if you are sharing the information in this Workbook this will remove these hidden items.
6. Hidden Worksheets
     a. Much like the hidden rows and columns, although this will delete hidden Worksheets.
7. Invisible Content
     a. These are invisible object that you may have; no one can see them because they have been formatted to be invisible. This will remove them for you if you want.

After you have run the inspection you will get a second dialog box that appears. This will give you the opportunity to decide if you want to remove certain sections. As seen in the photo below. You will have a Remove All button next to the sections that have found information in them.

Once you click the remove all you can also Reinspect the document by clicking Reinspect, or you can close the dialog box.

Hint: 

Remember to save this workbook under another name otherwise you will lose all the information that you removed from your original Workbook. Then the only way to retrieve that information after it has been removed is to re-enter it in the Workbook.