How to Delete Personally Identifiable Information from your Data Set or Document

It is generally best practice to not store Personally Identifiable Information (PII), like names and email addresses with survey data, particularly when you need to share the survey data with third parties. For a variety of reasons, this kind of information can end up in your data set and you may have cause to remove it. It is generally best to ask your data provider to remove this information before sending you a file for analysis (or ask them to send you a new file if you discover personal information after you've started working on the data), but you can also take steps to remove it yourself when that option is not available.

This article describes how to remove variables from your data set and then update it in your document.

Requirements

A Data Set loaded into your Displayr document.

Method - Remove from data set

1. In the Data Sources tree, select one or more variables you want to remove from your file.
2. In the object inspector, under Data, check the box labeled Hidden (except in variables and code).
3. Save the data set by going to Share > Export Data > Download as SPSS File (.SAV) or To Displayr Cloud Drive as SPSS File (.SAV). The hidden variables will be excluded from the file saved.
4. In the Data Sources tree, select the name of the file you already have loaded into your document via Upload file if exported directly or Displayr Cloud Drive if saved there in the previous step.
5. From the object inspector click Update and load the file saved in step 3.

Method - Remove from document

If you wish to additionally create a version of your Displayr document that doesn't include the Version History backup copies that contain the old data set which included PII, you can:

1. Select the name of the data set in the Data Sources tree.
2. Use the Update button in the object inspector to update the data with the new version without PII.
3. Click Share > Embed Object > Update All Embeds.
4. Go to your Documents page.
5. Hover over the existing document, then click ... > Duplicate to make a new copy.
6. Hover over the original document, then click ... > Delete to delete the document that contained PII.

Next

How to Delete Cases From a Data Set