Microsoft KB Archive/321489

= Visio2002: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Visio Drawings =

Article ID: 321489

Article Last Modified on 7/27/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visio 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Visio 2002 Professional Edition

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This article was previously published under Q321489





SUMMARY
This article explains various methods that you can use to minimize the amount of metadata in your Visio drawings.

When you create, open, or save a drawing in Microsoft Visio, the drawing may contain content that you may not want to share with others when you distribute the drawing electronically. This information is known as metadata. Metadata is used for a variety of purposes to enhance the editing, viewing, filing, and retrieval of Office files.

Some metadata is readily accessible through the Visio user interface. Other metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as by opening a drawing in a low-level binary file editor.

The following are some examples of metadata that may be stored in your drawings:
 * Your name
 * Your company or organization name
 * Other file properties and summary information
 * Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects
 * Comments
 * Custom properties



MORE INFORMATION
Metadata is created in a variety of ways in Visio drawings. As a result, there is no single method to remove all such content from your drawings. The following sections describe areas where metadata may be saved in Visio drawings.

How to Delete Your User Name from the Visio Program
To delete your user name, follow these steps:
 * 1) On the Tools menu, click Options. Click the General tab. You see the User name box.
 * 2) If you do not want this information to appear in your drawings, type non-identifying information or spaces in the User name box, and then click OK to accept the changes.

NOTE If you delete the contents of the User name box, Visio restores the default user name from the registry so that you cannot leave this box blank.

Any new diagrams that you create will contain this new information instead of the default values that you typed when you first installed Visio. However, existing drawings may already contain this information.

How to Delete Personal Summary Information
When you create or save a drawing in Visio, summary information may be saved in the file. There are several methods that you can use to gain access to this information:
 * Open the drawing. On the File menu, click Properties. The Summary tab may contain various properties, such as your name, your manager's name, and your company name.
 * In the Windows Explorer, right-click the drawing, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu. The Summary and Custom tabs may both contain various properties.

To delete Visio summary information from an existing drawing, follow these steps:
 * 1) Open the drawing.
 * 2) On the File menu, click Properties.
 * 3) On the Summary tab, delete any text in the Author, Manager, Company, and any other edit boxes that you do not want to distribute.
 * 4) When you are finished, click OK. On the File menu, Click Save.
 * 5) On the File menu, click Close.

After you have completed these steps, the drawing will not contain summary properties.

To delete any additional summary information in your drawing or custom information that is beyond Visio's control, follow these steps:
 * 1) Right-click Start, and then click Explore on the shortcut menu.
 * 2) Right-click an existing Visio drawing, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.
 * 3) On the Summary and Custom tabs, delete the information in the edit boxes that you do not want to distribute.

NOTE: The Summary and Custom tabs may not appear if the file is currently open or in use.

How to Automatically Delete Personal Summary Information by Using a Macro
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. The following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro demonstrates how to use the Document object and its properties to remove the summary information for the current drawing.

Using these properties is equivalent to using the Summary tab in the Properties dialog box (click Properties on the File menu). Sub ClearDocumentPropertiesExample

Dim docObj As Visio.Document Set docObj = ActiveDocument

' Set the properties of the document to nothing. docObj.Title = &quot;&quot; docObj.Subject = &quot;&quot; docObj.Creator = &quot;&quot; docObj.Manager = &quot;&quot; docObj.Company = &quot;&quot; docObj.Category = &quot;&quot; docObj.Keywords = &quot;&quot; docObj.Description = &quot;&quot; docObj.HyperlinkBase = &quot;&quot; docObj.AlternateNames = &quot;&quot; End Sub

How to Remove Comments in Drawings
Microsoft Visio offers the ability to add comments to individual shapes, a selection of shapes, or pages in a diagram. If comments contain personal information, you can clear all or some of the comments from the drawing.

In Microsoft Visio, you can remove all shape comments by following these steps:
 * 1) Select the whole drawing by clicking Select All on the Edit menu, or by pressing CTRL+A.
 * 2) On the Insert menu, click Comment. Type some non-identifying information or spaces, and then click OK.
 * 3) On the Edit menu, click Edit Comment. Press DELETE, and then click OK.

To remove a page comment, press CTRL+A, press ESC, and then click Edit Comment on the Insert menu. To remove existing comments, press DELETE, and then click OK.

NOTE: If Comment appears on the Insert menu, instead of Edit Comment, the drawing page does not contain a comment.

How to Remove Headers and Footers from Drawings
Headers and footers in drawings may contain identifying information. To remove information from headers and footers, follow these steps:
 * 1) On the View menu, click Header and Footer.
 * 2) Change the header and footer so that they contain no identifying information.
 * 3) When you are finished, click OK.

To verify the contents of the header and footer, click Print Preview on the File menu.

How to Delete Routing Slip Information from a Drawing
If you send a drawing through e-mail by using a routing slip, routing information may be attached to the diagram. To remove this information from the drawing, you must save the drawing in a format that does not retain routing slip information. To do this, follow these steps:
 * 1) On the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Other Routing Recipient.
 * 2) Click Clear to remove the routing slip. Then, click OK.
 * 3) On the File menu, click Save.

The drawing is now saved without any routing slip information.

Embedded Objects in Drawings May Contain Metadata
If you embed an object in a drawing, the object still retains its own properties, regardless of what you do to the drawing. For example, if you embed a Microsoft Word document in a Microsoft Visio drawing, the document and the drawing each have their own properties.

You can delete metadata from an embedded object by opening the object (right-click the object, point to Object, and then click Open), removing any metadata, reactivating the container drawing (in the previous example, this is the Visio drawing), and then saving the container drawing.

NOTE: When you open an embedded object in a drawing, only part of the embedded object is displayed in the drawing. The object may contain additional information that does not appear. If you want a drawing to contain only a rendering of the embedded object, and not the actual contents, follow these steps:
 * 1) Select the object. On the File menu, click Cut.
 * 2) On the Edit menu, click Paste Special to paste the object into the drawing by using a &quot;Picture (Enhanced Metafile)&quot; or &quot;Device Independent Bitmap&quot; format.

After you do this, you cannot edit the embedded object; however, the object will not contain any metadata.

How to Remove Custom Properties from a Visio Drawing
A Microsoft Visio drawing is more than a picture; it is a medium for storing data. A shape can behave as a visual database field that stores data that you can retrieve in a report. For example, an organization chart shape can store data about department, telephone, building, office, and other personal data that the shape represents.

The quickest method to remove custom properties from a diagram is to save the drawing to a file format that does not contain this type of identifying data. For example, you can save the drawing to a graphic file format, such as GIF or JPEG.

To save a drawing to a graphic format, follow these steps:
 * 1) On the File menu, click Save As.
 * 2) In the Save As dialog box, click a graphic format in the Save as type list, and then click OK.

The graphic file that you create is only a representation of the Visio diagram. The file does not contain the non-visible custom property data that is stored in the original drawing.

