How to Edit Workbook Metadata

by Chaknith Bin

IronXL library has the ability to edit workbook metadata without using Office Interop. Metadata can be used to describe or identify the workbook. When working with many spreadsheet files, the metadata information can also be used to categorize spreadsheet and making it more manageable.

C# NuGet Library for Excel

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Install-Package IronXL.Excel
or
C# Excel DLL

Download DLL

Download DLL

Manually install into your project

Edit Workbook Metadata Example

To add custom author name to spreadsheet file set the Author property with the desired string of data. For example, workBook.Metadata.Author = "Your Name". The meta-data properties available in Metadata property of WorkBook can be accessed and retrieved.

:path=/static-assets/excel/content-code-examples/how-to/edit-workbook-metadata.cs
using IronXL;
using System;

WorkBook workBook = WorkBook.Load("sample.xlsx");

// Set author
workBook.Metadata.Author = "Your Name";
// Set comments
workBook.Metadata.Comments = "Monthly report";
// Set title
workBook.Metadata.Title = "July";
// Set keywords
workBook.Metadata.Keywords = "Report";

// Read the creation date of the excel file
DateTime? creationDate = workBook.Metadata.Created;

// Read the last printed date of the excel file
DateTime? printDate = workBook.Metadata.LastPrinted;

workBook.SaveAs("editedMetadata.xlsx");
Imports IronXL
Imports System

Private workBook As WorkBook = WorkBook.Load("sample.xlsx")

' Set author
workBook.Metadata.Author = "Your Name"
' Set comments
workBook.Metadata.Comments = "Monthly report"
' Set title
workBook.Metadata.Title = "July"
' Set keywords
workBook.Metadata.Keywords = "Report"

' Read the creation date of the excel file
Dim creationDate? As DateTime = workBook.Metadata.Created

' Read the last printed date of the excel file
Dim printDate? As DateTime = workBook.Metadata.LastPrinted

workBook.SaveAs("editedMetadata.xlsx")
VB   C#
Metadata

Accessible Metadata Fields

Not all metadata property can be edited or changed. Some of the property can only be retrieved. Below are the lists of available properties:

Set, modified, and retrieve

  • Author
  • Comments
  • LastPrinted
  • Keywords and Category
  • Created and ModifiedDate
  • Subject and Title

Retrieve only

  • ApplicationName
  • CustomProperties
  • Company
  • Manager
  • Template

Chaknith Bin

Software Engineer

Chaknith is the Sherlock Holmes of developers. It first occurred to him he might have a future in software engineering, when he was doing code challenges for fun. His focus is on IronXL and IronBarcode, but he takes pride in helping customers with every product. Chaknith leverages his knowledge from talking directly with customers, to help further improve the products themselves. His anecdotal feedback goes beyond Jira tickets and supports product development, documentation and marketing, to improve customer’s overall experience.When he isn’t in the office, he can be found learning about machine learning, coding and hiking.