Extract metadata from Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets Leave feedback

Microsoft Excel files often contain hidden metadata such as the author, company, creation date, last modification time, and more. With GroupDocs.Parser for Java, you can easily extract this metadata from Excel spreadsheets (.xls and .xlsx) using the getMetadata method.

This guide explains how to extract Excel file metadata programmatically in just a few steps.

The getMetadata method allows you to access a wide range of Excel spreadsheet properties:

Properties that are empty in the spreadsheet are not included in the result.

Warning

getMetadata method returns null value if metadata extraction isn’t supported for the document. For example, metadata extraction isn’t supported for CSV files. Therefore, for CSV file getMetadata method returns null. If Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet has no metadata, getMetadata method returns an empty collection.

Follow these steps to extract metadata from an Excel file:

1. Instantiate the Parser object for the Excel spreadsheet.
2. Call the getMetadata method to retrieve all MetadataItem objects.
3. Iterate through the collection and print metadata names and values.

// Create an instance of Parser class
try (Parser parser = new Parser(Constants.SampleXlsx)) {
    // Extract metadata from the spreadsheet
    Iterable<MetadataItem> metadata = parser.getMetadata();
    // Iterate over metadata items
    for (MetadataItem item : metadata) {
        // Print an item name and value
        System.out.println(String.format("%s: %s", item.getName(), item.getValue()));
    }
}

You may easily run the code above and see the feature in action in our GitHub examples:

• GroupDocs.Parser for .NET examples
• GroupDocs.Parser for Java examples

Along with full featured Java library we provide simple, but powerful free Apps.

You are welcome to parse documents and extract data from PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, Emails and more with our free online Free Online Document Parser App.