EXCEL 365 Options-General

MachineLanguage · 04 Oct 2019

There is a placeholder for "username" under the heading "Personalize Your Copyof Microsoft Office". The default entry is/has been my Windows login name. This entry appears in the comments, or notes, added to
the spreadsheet. I am looking for a method to prevent this from appearing in notes/comments. When I erase it with the intent it will be blank, my windows login name reappears. When I use a blank space ":" still shows in the comment. I prefer nothing to be in the note/comment except the actual note. Any ideas? Thanks. This is not a user permissions question because I am the owner and administrator or said pc and software.

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No takers?

Caledon Ken · 04 Oct 2019

I would but a period in to the username space so there is something. Save it, close it and open.

Any change?

Not sure if you use Onedrive with 365 but you may have to sign out of Office. Then reopen the workbook with the period in user name and see if your name appears. This won't work if you are using the 1TB they offer Office 365 users as you need to be signed in.

MachineLanguage · 04 Oct 2019

I do appreciate the suggestion.
I have 365 Business and using local installation. I have previously signed out just to see if anthing changed.
If I leave the username blank, or just double quotes, or with just a space the notes always have a colon in place of the username. I would prefer it be left completely blank. No period, colon or other characters. I previously tried writing tot he usename with VBA. Admittedly this is just a personal quirk of mine but I am a bit surprised I can't solve it.

Caledon Ken · 04 Oct 2019

Hear you but a simple period.

MS is always helping us to the point where we can't stand it. One user says why when I create a document can't it be auto-filled, another say I don't want anything.

Would be nice, but costly, if everything was menu driven. This ain't going to happen as it just costs to much to maintain and test with ever patch / update.

Maybe another member will know a registry hack.

MachineLanguage · 04 Oct 2019

I will leave this thread open for a bit just in case someone else does have an interest in solving this trivial issue.

cereberus · 04 Oct 2019

Maybe entering a "non breaking space" would work?

Try pressing alt key and typing 0160 to enter a non breaking space character.

MachineLanguage · 05 Oct 2019

EXCEL 365 Options-General-blank-username.png

@cereberus
Interesting thought. I have tried other ascii codes but a colon and blank line are always at the top of the new note when no text is in the username box. There may not be a solution and it is not really important but now I really want to find a solution.

sygnus21 · 06 Oct 2019

MachineLanguage said:

There is a placeholder for "username" under the heading "Personalize Your Copyof Microsoft Office". The default entry is/has been my Windows login name. This entry appears in the comments, or notes, added to
the spreadsheet. I am looking for a method to prevent this from appearing in notes/comments. When I erase it with the intent it will be blank, my windows login name reappears. When I use a blank space ":" still shows in the comment. I prefer nothing to be in the note/comment except the actual note. Any ideas? Thanks. This is not a user permissions question because I am the owner and administrator or said pc and software.

I just tried to leave the user name blank and clicking save. However, when opening any document the previous name still appears. I'm going to assume this is an Office 365 intentional behavior in that there needs to be some kind of name there to identify the document. That's fine by me as I always like to have my name in my documents anyway.

MachineLanguage · 06 Oct 2019

sygnus21 said:

I just tried to leave the user name blank and clicking save. However, when opening any document the previous name still appears. I'm going to assume this is an Office 365 intentional behavior in that there needs to be some kind of name there to identify the document. That's fine by me as I always like to have my name in my documents anyway.

Pretty sure you are correct. Just one of those things I had to determine.

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Thanks for all the research folks.