General Question. Is there a way to distribute (sell) an Excel File but protect the contents from being hacked, copied?

[gkis2]

I enjoy writing Code for Excel files. Is there any way I can ever sell an Excel file and protect it so that it can't just be copied and distributed freely to anyone who wants it?

 

[Jeffrey Mahoney]

I have done that many ways. Prior to Office 365, there were still easy ways for people to remove the passwords from protected sheets. I'll let others chime in, but I think they have improved the sheet protection. Locking the VBA is important.

More importantly, you need to build in the expiration and a way to renew it. They need to be able to pay for a copy or for an extended license and you need to be able to add that to their version of the workbook. I once created a string of ASCII characters that had an embedded date. I sent that to them. They used the update feature and pasted the string and the macro stored that in a hidden place. Your going to have to create a way to store a unique identifier in their version so that they can't share that with all their friends. In other words, one person could update and then send that to others. So, are you going to check their login names? Are you going to find a way to check the computer ID?

For me, I once created a way to copy all of their personal data over to a new version of the workbook so updates could be easier. I had to check for the expiration.

 

[Fluff]

At the end of the day Excel is not a secure platform and it is quite easy to breach it's security.
There are various Excel compilers that will turn you workbook into an Exe file, which is probably more secure, but have no idea what any of them are like.