Reading document properties with VBA

In the Windows Explorer it is possible to view a document’s properties.  Right-click on the file and select Properties.

There is useful information in here, such as author, creation date, last saved date etc.  The good news is, we can access this information using VBA with  the BuiltinDocumentProperties Property.

Not all document properties are populated with data, as it depends on the file type. For example, Excel files do not have data about the number of slides property, but a PowerPoint file does.  Yet, both Excel and PowerPoint files have a number of slides property, it’s just not used in all circumstances.

The basic VBA code

'Finding the author of the ActiveWorkbook
Debug.Print ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Author")

'Finding the creation date of another workbook
Dim Wb As Workbook
Set Wb = Workbooks("myFileTest.xlsx")
Debug.Print Wb.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation date")

Working with closed files

By using the BuiltinDocumentProperties there is no way to read the properties from a closed file.  Therefore it is necessary to open the file, read the properties, then close the file.

'Find the Last saved time of a currently closed file
Dim Wb As Workbook
Set Wb = Workbooks.Open("C:\Users\marks\Documents\myFileTest.xlsx")
Debug.Print Wb.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Last save time")
Wb.Close

Note: Take a look in the comments section below as there appears to be a way to read and change properties on a closed file.  But that is outside the scope of this post.

Catching errors

Referencing a property which does not have any information will throw and error.

It is possible to catch the errors so that you know the value is blank:

'Catching errors when there is no value
Dim fileProperty As Variant
fileProperty = "Number of slides"

On Error Resume Next
Debug.Print ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties(fileProperty)
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
    Debug.Print fileProperty & " is blank"
End If
On Error GoTo 0

All the available properties

The available properties are:

Title Subject Author Keywords Comments Template Last author Revision number Application name Last print date Creation date Last save time

Total editing time Number of pages Number of words Number of characters Security Category Format Manager Company Number of bytes Number of lines Number of paragraphs

Number of slides Number of notes Number of hidden Slides Number of multimedia clips Hyperlink base Number of characters (with spaces) Content type Content status Language Document version

It is also possible to loop through and list all of the available properties:

'List all the file properties available
Dim fileProperty As Variant
For Each fileProperty In ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties
    Debug.Print fileProperty.Name
Next fileProperty

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What next?

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