Protecting Time Investment

[Tommy00836]

Hi,

I seem to be investing lots of time developing various spreadsheets specific for the business that end up getting into the hands of competitors.

Whilst it is satisfying to get sheets to male life easy, it is frustrating when you spend hours/days developing sheets that ultimately get used against you by competitors, making their lives easy for no effort/cost.

Is there a way to lock excel files that will only work if they are sat on your own server or something?

Sorry, I am not very technical at all and can manage to put some simple sheets together, this is way above me

Thanks

 

[FuNeS13]

You Can protect your files with a password, but be carefull, if you forget the password chances are that you won't be able to get the data back.... Go to File --> Info --> Protect Workbook --> Encrypt with Password... Add a password (prompted twice) and the next time you open the file the user will be prompted to enter the password in order to view/edit the file. if you email it it will also request the password to anyone who uses it.

There is another way to protect your workbook or worksheet, in the Review Ribbon, the Proect Area has several options, the most common if you are only using single sheets files (or not that many sheets) you can select the protect sheet option and add a password to it, if you are using multiple sheet add a different password to each sheet that way if anyone cracks one of them they will still be missing the other passwords... if you need any cell to be able to editable, before protecting the sheet select the cell(or cells) and press ctrl+1 in your keyboard, on the last tab (protection) un check the "Locked" option and the protech the sheet, the cells you selected will be editable but all other cells will be locked for editing.

 

[Tommy00836]

Thanks for the reply.
The issue with password protection is the obvious, once the password has been compromised (given out) it becomes open

I’m looking for something within the sheet that looks for something local in the server before it will open if tgg BF ya makes sense

 

[juddaaaa]

This could be quite annoying for somebody

Private Sub Workbook_Open()

    If Environ("COMPUTERNAME") <> "YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME" Then Application.Quit

End Sub

Just change YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME to your actual computer name.

I would also save a copy without this in just in case

 

[Michael M]

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
    If Environ("COMPUTERNAME") <> "YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME" Then Application.Quit
End Sub

Yep...until somebody disables ALL macros then it won't work !
There is basically no way to lock Excel files securely, as Excel security is very weak.
It depends on how much effort you want to put in.....but if they want to steal your work, they will....unless you convert your work to an addin or executable app.

 

[Joe4]

What Michael says is very true. It is not very difficult to break the Excel security measures (it is a known weakness).
If you are intent on really making it secure, your best bet is probably to look into the addin or executable options he mentions.

 

[Fluff]

@Tommy00836
Please do not post the same question multiple times. All clarifications, follow-ups, and bumps should be posted back to the original thread.

I have merged both threads.