Be careful! Parts of your document may include personal information that can't be removed by the Document Inspector.

Anonymous
2013-09-27T08:26:34+00:00

Hi All

I have an Excel 2013 document that I've been using for over two months and have had no problems with editing or saving it. Today I edit it and than saved it and I received a strange looking error message "Be careful! Parts of your document may include personal information that can't be removed by the Document Inspector."

I have tried to find out any information on what it might be, by using Bing and Google without any success. It looks like I'm the only one who has received this error message. I hope it's not a virus!

Please help

Colin

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2013-09-28T02:05:11+00:00

I had the same problem, it's incredibly annoying and there's strangely little posted about it on the interwebs.  Anyway, here's how you fix it: Goto File in the upper left hand corner, then Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > then un-check the check box that says "Remove personal information from file properties on save", then hit OK.  Hope that helps.

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-10-11T00:32:07+00:00

    Hi, here is the way I use to stop having the message:

    Open your document.

    Go to: File>Info>Check for Issues

    On the right of the Icon box you have:

    "Inspect Workbook"

    "A setting that automatically removes....."

    Under a link: "Allow this information to be saved in your file"

    Click on it, the message doesn't appears anymore when you save your document...

    If you go to File>Options>Trust Center

    Click on Trust Center Settings, Document Inspector

    You can see that the "Remove Personal Information from file properties on save" is not anymore available .

    If you run inspector, a message said that some information are embedded in your file:

    1. Document Properties
    2. Absolute path of the workbook

    So you can remove this information by clicking on the right side button...

    Remind that if you send your document without doing it, you share some "Privacy information" at the same time that your document...

    Hope could be helpful...

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-08-29T09:30:15+00:00

    I had the same problem, it's incredibly annoying and there's strangely little posted about it on the interwebs.  Anyway, here's how you fix it: Goto File in the upper left hand corner, then Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > then un-check the check box that says "Remove personal information from file properties on save", then hit OK.  Hope that helps.

    Excellent.. the annoying dialogue has been gone.

    Thanks buddy

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-07-30T16:54:18+00:00

    This seems like a great approach, but that setting is greyed out for me.  I am an admin on the local box, and a domain admin for my o365 domain.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-07-06T15:58:24+00:00

    This worked perfectly for me! Could it have something to do with creating an excel file (via copying) directly on a file server? Those were the only documents I have had this issue with.

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