Excel Cleaner
Prepare workbooks for sharing by removing hidden tabs, formulas, comments, hyperlinks, empty edges, and document metadata locally.
Drop your file here or click to upload
Supports .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .xlsb · up to 50MB · or paste a file from your clipboard
What Gets Inspected When You Drop a File
Before anything is changed, the workbook is read and counted: how many sheets it has, how many of those are hidden, and how many cells carry a formula, a comment, or a hyperlink. Those five numbers are the reason to run this tool at all - they are the residue a workbook accumulates that you would rather not hand to a client or attach to a public ticket. Nothing is modified until you press Clean Workbook, and your original file on disk is never touched.
The Six Options, Precisely
| Option | What it removes | What survives |
|---|---|---|
| Remove hidden sheets | Every sheet flagged hidden, and its data | Visible sheets, in order |
| Strip formulas | The formula text on each cell | The value it last calculated |
| Remove comments | Cell notes and threaded comments | The cell value |
| Remove hyperlinks | The link target on the cell | The visible link text |
| Trim empty edges | Every fully empty row and column, interior ones included | Cell values only - see below |
| Clear workbook metadata | Author, title, company, custom properties | All sheet content |
Read This Before Ticking Trim Empty Edges
The name undersells what it does. The option rebuilds each sheet from the cells that actually hold values, which means blank rows and blank columns anywhere in the sheet are dropped and the remaining data closes up - a report laid out with spacer rows between sections comes back as one solid block. Because the rebuild writes values, that sheet also loses its formulas, comments, hyperlinks, merged cells, and column widths whatever the other checkboxes say. It is the right option for turning a sprawling export into a tight data table, and the wrong one for a formatted document. Untick it and the other five options work surgically, leaving everything they do not name alone.
The Report Is the Receipt
After cleaning, the eight counters tell you exactly what happened: sheets removed and left, formulas stripped, comments and links removed, rows and columns trimmed, and whether metadata was cleared. Compare them against the inspection numbers from before the run. A zero where you expected a number usually means the residue was not there - a hidden-sheet count of zero is worth trusting, since it comes from the workbook's own sheet visibility flags rather than a guess.
Limits to Be Honest About
This tool cleans workbooks it can already read. It does not remove open passwords or encryption, does not lift sheet protection, and leaves defined names, data validation, and conditional formatting in place. One safety rule is built in: if every sheet in the file is hidden, no sheet is removed, because a workbook cannot have none. The download is written as .xlsx, so a macro-enabled .xlsm workbook comes back without its VBA project, and cell fonts, fills, and borders are not carried through the rewrite.
How to Clean a Workbook Before Sharing
- Upload the workbook - .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, or .xlsb, read locally in your browser.
- Read the inspection row - hidden sheets and comment counts are the ones that embarrass people.
- Choose only the actions you want - all six are on by default, and Trim empty edges is the destructive one.
- Clean, then check the report - it names each hidden sheet that was removed.
- Download the clean copy - your original file is unchanged.
When a Different Tool Fits Better
If the only concern is who authored the file, Excel Metadata Remover handles document properties without touching sheets. To remove VBA and keep the workbook working, use Excel Macro Remover rather than relying on the format change here. If styling rather than structure is the problem, Remove Formatting in Excel is the targeted version, and when only one sheet should leave the building at all, Excel Splitter extracts it. For messy cell values - padding, duplicates, inconsistent case - the job belongs to Excel Data Cleaner instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
No, and this is the option to be careful with. It rebuilds each sheet from the cells that hold values, so every completely empty row and every completely empty column is dropped - including ones in the middle - and the surviving rows and columns close up. A layout that uses blank spacer rows between blocks comes back compacted.
That rebuild writes values only. On any sheet it touches, formulas, comments, hyperlinks, merged cells, and column widths are gone regardless of how the other checkboxes are set. Untick it when you want a surgical clean that leaves the sheet layout intact.
The value each formula last calculated, as a static cell. Excel stores that cached result in the file, so the numbers you saw are the numbers you keep - they simply stop recalculating. This is the usual way to send a model's output without sending the model.
Deleted, along with their contents. The one exception is a workbook where every sheet is hidden - a file cannot have zero sheets, so nothing is removed in that case and the report shows no sheets removed.
Encryption and open passwords, sheet protection, defined names, data validation rules, and conditional formatting all survive. It also cannot see revision history or tracked changes. Cell fonts, fills, and borders are dropped by the writer rather than by any option, and because the download is always .xlsx an .xlsm workbook loses its macros.