Can a tab not be viewable until requirement is met in another sheet?

[Mandy_]

Hi,

I've been doing some reading and can't find any information - so I thought I'd ask, and I'm open to other suggestions on how to approach this problem as well.

I've created a document, that you can meal plan for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks for 8 weeks, and with each meal item selected a shopping list is compiled with each recipe added. And the ingredient amounts are added together for the shopping list. The meal items are selected from dependant drop down lists.

If only one recipe was selected, the shopping list would show just the ingredients for the one recipe. I'm speaking to someone who might be interested in what I have created - but don't want the ingredients to be identifiable for each recipe. So I was thinking of maybe only having the tab for the shopping list able to be viewed after (3 or 4?) recipes/meal items have been added to the meal planner and by extension of this action, the shopping list itself.

Is this idea of mine doable? Can it be done without VBA code? The whole document currently doesn't have VBA code, and I would really like to keep it that way.
Do you have another idea of how to solve this?

Thank you for your time.

 

[6StringJazzer]

VBA code is required to manage whether tabs are visible.

I can think of a way with a combination of conditional formatting and password-protected sheet protection to made the contents of a tab invisible (that is, make the font white, and prevent selection of the cells). I've never actually done that so I'm not sure it's foolproof. It would probably work for the casual user but should not be considered a security measure; password protection can be defeated.

To give you specifics for your file, I would have to see how your file is set up. For example, it sounds like your selection for meal items is a different tab than the shopping list that you want to hide. And you don't say where the recipes are. Do you have access to a cloud service to share the file (Google Docs, Dropbox, etc.)? Another alternative is to use the MrExcel add-in that allows you to copy a range and paste it into a post. You would have to show the sheet where you select meal items and also your shopping list sheet.