Distribute Add-In as Machine Code Only?

[Lazzaroni]

I have been developing an add-in for a company for a number of years now. Its
size and the number of people who use it have grown to the point that I would
like to explore the option of distributing the add-in as machine code only.
Not having to distribute the source code along with the program file would
protect the source code and considerably reduce the size of the program file.
The size of the file is important because I regularly update the program file
from a remote location, and the users are prompted to download the new file
whenever there is an update.

At this point the add-in runs exclusively in Excel and is accessed through a
drop-down menu that is added to the menu bar when the add-in is activated. I
need to preserve full Excel functionality, but I wouldn’t mind expanding the
scope of the program outside of Excel.

Nevertheless, my main goal is to limit the distributed portion of the
program file to machine code only, not source code.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[RB Smissaert]

Your best and easiest option is probably to move your code (as much as you
can) to a VB6 ActiveX dll.
You can then set a reference to this dll in your trimmed down .xla file and
run the code in the dll.

RBS