Protecting and Hiding formulas

[Pav]

I have password protected a spreadsheet that shows various costings. When I
copy and "Paste Special" onto a new sheet with "Formulas", "Values, "Formulas
& Formats", etc. the paste reveals all my hidden costs, formulas, etc.

Is there any way of preventing this?

Thanks in Advance
Pav

 

[Dave Peterson]

You can lock the cells and hide the formulas:

Select your cells to lock
format|cells|protection tab
check Lock and Hidden

Then protect the worksheet
tools|Protection|protect sheet

Then when you copy|paste, the formulas will be converted to values.

I don't think that there's a good way to protect your hidden costs within excel,
though.

In fact, the worksheet protection is easily broken and your formulas will be
able to be seen, too.

Protection in xl is more for stopping users from making typing
errors--overwriting cells with formulas/labels that shouldn't be changed. It's
not really a security measure.

 

[Pav]

Thanks. Is there any way or any other software with which I can keep the
costs, formulas hidden?

Thanks
Pav

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe some compiled language--VB, C++, or the like.

I don't know enough about them to know if their executables can be reversed
engineered to show your costs.

I know that we shared customer prices with each customer (and each price could
vary depending on customer, so we never shared all the prices with all the
customers).

But we never shared costs with anyone--well, except for once and that was a
mistake (not mine, thank goodness!).