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Custom properties and SharePoint columns in an Excel workbook: the case numbers, owners and status a copy can keep

Last updated: 28 October 2026

This page is about Excel workbooks. The same properties in Word, and how templates fill them, are in Word document properties; what a OneDrive or SharePoint link shows that an attachment does not, such as earlier versions, is in links vs attachments; and paths to other files are in full paths in Excel workbooks.

Four kinds of properties

Microsoft's page View or change the properties for an Office file names four kinds: standard properties, "such as author, title, and subject"; automatically updated properties; custom properties, to which "you can assign a text, time, or numeric value" or yes or no, choosing "from a list of suggested names" or defining your own; and document library properties, which are "associated with documents in a document library on a website or in a public folder". For the last kind it says: "When you open a document from a document library in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you can edit and update these document library properties by selecting File > Info."

The standard properties are what most people clear before sending a file. The other two are easier to miss: a custom property stays until someone deletes it, whoever added it (how values arrive from templates is in Word document properties), and a library property may have been filled in by someone else when the file was saved to the library.

Where each one is in the .xlsx

The first two rows come from the file format standard, ISO/IEC 29500-1 (1st edition), as quoted on Microsoft's Open XML SDK page CustomDocumentProperty: each element "specifies a single custom file property", and linkTarget names "a table or named cell (for SpreadsheetML) from which the value of this custom document property should be extracted". So a property linked to a cell can repeat a figure or a name from the workbook in the properties, and if the cell or name is gone, "the cached value shall be retained": the property keeps a value that may no longer be on any sheet. For the status, Microsoft's reference for PackageProperties.ContentStatus gives as examples "Draft", "Reviewed", and "Final".

The rows on SharePoint come from Microsoft's developer documentation for SharePoint 2007, which is kept in its archive of previous versions. The page Document Properties and Content Types says that if the content type assigned to a document "includes columns, the values for those columns are included in the document itself as document properties", that the content type id "is stored in the document itself, as a custom document property", and that the column definitions are kept in "the contentTypeSchema data store item". It adds that the attributes of a custom Document Information Panel, which include "the location of the Microsoft Office InfoPath form to use as the custom panel", are demoted into the document as a data store item that "has the root element of customXsn". The page Document Information Panel and Document Properties says that the values of the columns themselves "are contained in the documentManagement node of the properties data store item", lists Content Type and Status among the library columns mapped to core document properties, and notes that the content type id property "is never promoted from the document to the document library". Both pages add that each such part is named itemN.xml "with N being an arbitrary number", so you find these parts by what they contain, not by their file name.

Why a copy can keep them

The page Document Information Panel and Document Properties describes the values moving both ways: they "are promoted back to the document library, as column values, when the user updates them in the document", and if someone changes the column values in the library, "the new values are demoted into the document itself, as document properties". Values that are in the file travel with any copy of it: a download, an attachment made from it, a file copied to a USB stick. These pages describe SharePoint 2007, and we found no current Microsoft page that says which column values SharePoint in Microsoft 365 writes into a file you download, so check the copy you are about to send rather than assume either way.

Two things follow from the promote-and-demote design. A cleaned copy put back into a library is a file in that library again: the same page says that when a column value is changed in the library, "the new column value is demoted into the document as the appropriate document property when the document is next downloaded". So clean the copy that leaves, after it leaves the library. And a column value that seemed internal to the library, such as the name of the person a case is assigned to, can be in the workbook a client receives.

What Document Inspector covers

Microsoft's page Remove hidden data and personal information by inspecting documents, presentations, or workbooks lists, for Excel, among what the Document Properties and Personal Information inspector removes: "Document properties, including information from the Summary, Statistics, and Custom tabs of the Document Properties dialog box", "Document server properties", "Document Management Policy information" and "Content type information". A separate Custom XML Data inspector removes "Custom XML data that might be stored within a workbook". The page explains document server properties this way: "Workbooks that are saved to a location on a document management server, such as a Document Workspace site or a library based on Windows SharePoint Services, might contain additional document properties or information related to the server location."

The page also has a limit: if a workbook "has been saved as a Shared Workbook, you can't remove comments, annotations, document properties, and personal information", and it says to make a copy and turn off the Shared Workbook feature first. Shared workbooks are covered in co-authoring and shared workbooks.

Check them in Excel

1. Work on a copy that is outside the library, for example one you downloaded.
2. Open File › Info and select Show All Properties. Read every value, the library's properties included, if Excel shows them there.
3. Select Properties › Advanced Properties and open the Custom tab, where Microsoft's page says custom properties are viewed and added. Note the ones the recipient should not see, and remove them, for example with Document Inspector in the next step.
4. On Windows, run Document Inspector (File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document) with Document Properties and Personal Information and Custom XML Data selected, and remove what it finds.
5. Save, then check the copy again as below.

Check a copy of the file

1. Make a copy of the .xlsx, rename it to .zip and unzip it.
2. Open docProps/custom.xml, if there is one. Every property element is a custom property; read its name attribute and its value, and look for linkTarget and ContentTypeId.
3. Open docProps/core.xml and look for cp:contentStatus and cp:contentType, besides the author and dates.
4. If there is a customXml folder, open each item file. One whose root is p:properties holds the library's column values under documentManagement; one whose root is ct:contentTypeSchema holds the column names, and one whose root is customXsn holds the settings of a custom Document Information Panel, among them the location of its form. Other items can belong to add-ins or other systems; read them too.
5. Finding nothing this way shows only that these searches found nothing, not that the file holds nothing else.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads the .xlsx in your browser; the file is not uploaded. For free, one file at a time, it lists the document properties with a count and the first few as samples (a custom property appears as its name and value, but one can be counted without being shown, so read the Custom tab or docProps/custom.xml too), and removes them: the core, extended and custom properties parts go whole, which takes out the custom properties (one linked to a cell included), the ContentTypeId, the status and the content type together. It also lists custom XML parts by name, among the other kinds of hidden data it supports, and removes comments and accepts tracked changes.

The values of the library's own columns, other than those mapped to core properties such as Title or Status, are in a custom XML part, not in the properties, so the free version leaves them in the file. ScrubDrop Pro removes custom XML parts, the column values, the column definitions and the panel settings with them. The list names the first few custom XML parts by their file names and does not show what they hold, so read the item files as above if you want to know. The result is read again with separate parsers, and a file that does not pass is not offered. ScrubDrop does not change the copy in the library, and a cleaned file put back into a library can take on its values again when they are changed there, as above.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft pages linked on this page were checked on 28 October 2026. ScrubDrop is not affiliated with Microsoft.