Applying protection to an Excel Expense Report

[Donna Bennett]

I would like to know how I can prevent an Excel expense
report document I developed from being unprotected. When
we release the document for use, it is protected. But, if
someone does a "save as" the document unprotects. We want
to remove the capability to unprotect when they do a save
as. Is there a way to do this?

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

I'm assuming that by "protection" you mean a file password, rather
than worksheet or workbook protection via the Tools/Protection menu
item.

In general, if your users can save the document, they can remove
protection.

There are ways you can make it more difficult (e.g., a
Workbook_BeforeSave event macro that bypasses XL's SaveAs command,
but that depends on having macros enabled, which may or may not be
acceptable to you. It's not secure - but will keep the incurious or
beginner from tampering.

If your users are even somewhat clever, they can simply copy your
sheets to a new workbook, unless you disable that as well (which
again requires that macros be enabled, and again, can be easily
bypassed).