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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
    2014-06-09T01:20:12+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.

    This isn't a fix, it just hides the problem.

    The dialog is not an "Error", it is an "Informational" message, which is less severe than an error. It just says there "MAY" be personal information in the file.  That is pretty useless, is there is there not personal info.  Who would know better, MS has the inside info to be able to tell us.  This is another fine example of a half-assed effort.  MS could tell us exactly what and where this alleged personal information is, but they are too lazy to do it right.

    Disabling the informational warning does nothing to remove the personal information, if it is there.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-02-07T17:19:02+00:00

    I fixed it by going to File, Info, Check for issues, and inspect document.

    Keep everything checked and run it.

    Mine came back with no errors and afterwards the message no longer appeared on save.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-09-27T18:28:55+00:00

    Hi Colin,

    I had the same thing happen on one of my spreadsheets, so you are not the only one. I just copied the content to a new sheet and it went away.

    Paul

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-10-01T15:22:21+00:00

    Thanks, GodelEscherBob. 

    After using the document inspector to remove hidden data and personal information from my file, this message began to pop up incessantly at every save (despite autosave, a little compulsive with CTRL+S).

    Highly annoying and unexpected, never would I have found the fix buried in options...

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