Excel 2010 Bible

637

CHAPTER

Protecting Your Work

IN THIS CHAPTER

Protecting worksheets

Protecting workbooks

Protecting Visual Basic Projects

Other related topics

T

he concept of “protection” gets a lot of attention in the Excel news-
groups and forums. It seems that many users want to learn how to
protect their workbooks from being copied or modified. Excel has
several protection-related features, and those features are covered in this
chapter.

Types of Protection

Excel’s protection-related features fall into three categories:

l (^) Worksheet protection: Protecting a worksheet from being modi-
fied, or restricting the modifications to certain users
l (^) Workbook protection: Protecting a workbook from having sheets
inserted or deleted, and also requiring the use of password to open
the workbook
l Visual Basic (VB) protection: Using a password to prevent others
from viewing or modifying your VBA code
Caution
Before I discuss these features, you should understand the notion of security.
Using a password to protect some aspect of your work doesn’t guarantee that
it’s secure. Password-cracking utilities (and some simple tricks) have been
around for a long time. Using passwords work in the vast majority of cases, but
if someone is truly intent on getting to your data, he or she can usually find a
way. If absolute security is critical, perhaps Excel isn’t the proper tool. n