Document properties in Excel are important pieces of metadata that provide additional information about a workbook. If you are managing multiple Excel workbooks and want to keep track of information like author, title, and other relevant metadata, you can read their document properties to quickly gather this information. Besides, in certain situations, you may need to delete document properties from Excel. For instance, if sensitive data is inadvertently stored in document properties, you may need to delete these document properties before sharing the workbook to ensure data security and confidentiality. This article will show you how to read or delete document properties from Excel in Java using Spire.XLS for Java library.
- Read Standard and Custom Document Properties from Excel in Java
- Delete Standard and Custom Document Properties from Excel in Java
Install Spire.XLS for Java
First of all, you're required to add the Spire.Xls.jar file as a dependency in your Java program. The JAR file can be downloaded from this link. If you use Maven, you can easily import the JAR file in your application by adding the following code to your project's pom.xml file.
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.e-iceblue</id>
<name>e-iceblue</name>
<url>https://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
</repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
<artifactId>spire.xls</artifactId>
<version>14.11.0</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Read Standard and Custom Document Properties from Excel in Java
Standard document properties are pre-built properties included in every Excel file. These properties can include information such as the author, title, subject, keywords, and other details about the file. Custom document properties in Excel are user-defined, meaning that users can create them according to their specific needs. The value of custom document properties can be assigned as text, date time, numeric values, or simply a yes or no.
The following steps demonstrate how to read standard document properties and custom document properties of an Excel file using Spire.XLS for Java:
- Initialize an instance of the Workbook class.
- Load an Excel file using the Workbook.loadFromFile() method.
- Initialize an instance of the StringBuilder class for storing the standard and custom document properties.
- Get the collection of all standard document properties of the file using the Workbook.getDocumentProperties() method.
- Get specific standard document properties using the corresponding methods under the BuiltInDocumentProperties class.
- Append the standard document properties to the StringBuilder instance.
- Get the collection of all custom document properties of the file using the Workbook.getCustomDocumentProperties() method.
- Iterate through the collection.
- Get the name and value of each custom document property using the IDocumentProperty.getName() and IDocumentProperty.getValue() methods and append them to the StringBuilder instance.
- Write the content of the StringBuilder instance into a text file.
- Java
import com.spire.xls.Workbook;
import com.spire.xls.collections.BuiltInDocumentProperties;
import com.spire.xls.core.ICustomDocumentProperties;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
public class ReadStandardDocumentProperties {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
//Initialize an instance of the Workbook class.
Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
//Load an Excel file
workbook.loadFromFile("Sample.xlsx");
//Initialize an instance of the StringBuilder instance
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
//Get the collection of all standard document properties
BuiltInDocumentProperties standardProperties = workbook.getDocumentProperties();
//Get specific standard document properties
String title = standardProperties.getTitle();
String subject = standardProperties.getSubject();
String author = standardProperties.getAuthor();
String keywords = standardProperties.getKeywords();
String manager = standardProperties.getManager();
String company = standardProperties.getCompany();
String category = standardProperties.getCategory();
String comments = standardProperties.getComments();
//Append the standard document properties to the StringBuilder instance
sb.append("Standard Document properties:"
+"\r\nTitle: " + title
+ "\r\nSubject: " + subject
+ "\r\nAuthor: " + author
+ "\r\nKeywords: "+ keywords
+ "\r\nManager: " + manager.toString()
+ "\r\nCompany: " + company.toString()
+ "\r\nCategory: " + category.toString()
+ "\r\nComments: " + comments.toString()
);
sb.append("\r\n\nCustom Document Properties:");
//Get the collection of all custom document properties
ICustomDocumentProperties customProperties = workbook.getCustomDocumentProperties();
//Iterate through the collection
for(int i =0; i < customProperties.getCount(); i++)
{
//Append the name and value of each custom document property to the StringBuilder instance
sb.append("\r\n" + customProperties.get(i).getName() + ": " + customProperties.get(i).getValue());
}
//Write the content of the StringBuilder instance into a text file
String output = "ReadDocumentProperties.txt";
FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(output, true);
BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);
bw.append(sb);
bw.close();
fw.close();
workbook.dispose();
}
}
Delete Standard and Custom Document Properties from Excel in Java
You can easily delete standard document properties from an Excel file by setting their values as empty. For custom document properties, you can use the ICustomDocumentProperties.remove() method to delete them.
The following steps demonstrate how to delete standard and custom document properties from an Excel file using Spire.XLS for Java:
- Initialize an instance of the Workbook class.
- Load an Excel file using the Workbook.loadFromFile() method.
- Get the collection of all standard document properties of the file using the Workbook.getDocumentProperties() method.
- Set the values of specific standard document properties as empty using the corresponding methods under the BuiltInDocumentProperties class.
- Get the collection of all custom document properties of the file using the Workbook.getCustomDocumentProperties() method.
- Iterate through the collection.
- Delete each custom document property from the collection using the ICustomDocumentProperties.remove() method.
- Save the result file using the Workbook.saveToFile() method.
- Java
import com.spire.xls.ExcelVersion;
import com.spire.xls.Workbook;
import com.spire.xls.collections.BuiltInDocumentProperties;
import com.spire.xls.core.ICustomDocumentProperties;
public class DeleteDocumentProperties {
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Initialize an instance of the Workbook class.
Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
//Load an Excel file
workbook.loadFromFile("Sample.xlsx");
//Get the collection of all standard document properties
BuiltInDocumentProperties standardProperties = workbook.getDocumentProperties();
//Set the value of each standard document property as empty
standardProperties.setTitle("");
standardProperties.setSubject("");
standardProperties.setAuthor("");
standardProperties.setManager("");
standardProperties.setCompany("");
standardProperties.setCategory("");
standardProperties.setKeywords("");
standardProperties.setComments("");
//Get the collection of all custom document properties
ICustomDocumentProperties customProperties = workbook.getCustomDocumentProperties();
//Iterate through the collection
for(int i = customProperties.getCount() - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
//Delete each custom document property from the collection by its name
customProperties.remove(customProperties.get(i).getName());
}
//Save the result file
workbook.saveToFile("DeleteDocumentProperties.xlsx", ExcelVersion.Version2016);
workbook.dispose();
}
}
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