I’ve spent quite a bit of time putting together an excel sheet; its not the sheet itself thats complicated more the information within it thats sensitive.

I need to give someone a copy but want to retain complete control – is there anyway I can remotely kill an excel workbook if I wanted to? or add some passwords so that nothing can be changed (with some sheets hidden)?

I know you can go into ‘protection’ then ‘protect workbook’ and assign a password but I’ve also seen the IT guys we use cracking these pretty easily

thanks

You could poss. write a macro that’ll delete the workbook (or the info in it) it resides in once a certain date is reached.

link the spreadsheet so sensitive data that is held on-line somewhere?

I’ve also seen the IT guys we use cracking these pretty easily

Edit- So you can, with open office.

Do they need to do any work in it? Or see your formulas?

Save as PDF?

Save as .JPG?

(-:

Get the data into a proper database (sqlserver) ,create a db user with read only (select) access to this data, get your users to create an excel data connection to the database with this user.

The moment you release the data you have problems, firstly do you need the end user have access? can you limit the amount of data they receive. Are they on the same network or are you intending to send them the file, try the former.

Next is Excel really the best tool? can you use a database, either a web interface or a network user?

Excel security is anti tamper rather than secure, regardless of the passwords you enter to protect the sheets there’s only about 40000 password codes Excel translates it into. Very easy for a modern computer to crack. There’s plenty of code on the internet you can easily download to open it all up.

You could poss. write a macro that’ll delete the workbook (or the info in it) it resides in once a certain date is reached.

I like the sound of this one^^^^^^^^^^

Ideally, it would be in a database but this is an ongoing thing for me, it’s all to do with building up rates in construction for labour plant and materials…………Ive spent a lot of time measuring machine capacities and labour outputs.

I go off sick tomorrow night for 2 weeks and have been asked to hand everything over – so something quick and easy to act as a stopgap such as doing the macro thing above would be ideal or i like the idea of linking to other sheets on line

Any step-by-step help appreciated

Thanks

Take copies of everything before you go, in case they knacker it.

Actually,

If all you need to do is give them a read-only copy of the data, you could just give them a printout?

cougar, ideally yes but if you can imagine a workbook with say 10 sheets in it which are all linked to one another and the first sheet is the ‘constants’ sheet which is the only one I have to change for each contract (working hours, fuel costs, aggregate costs, concrete costs etc etc)

put it on a PC with no removable storage and the USB ports and LAN ports araldited up?