Chapter 30: Protecting Your Work
In This Chapter
Protecting worksheets
Protecting workbooks
Protecting Visual Basic Projects
Creating PDFs and checking documents
The concept of “protection” gets a lot of attention in the Excel forums. It seems that many users want to learn how to protect various workbook elements from being overwritten or copied. 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:
• Worksheet protection: Protecting a worksheet from being modified or restricting the modifications to certain users
• Workbook protection: Protecting a workbook from having sheets inserted or deleted, and requiring the use of a password to open the workbook
• 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 can usually find a way. If absolute security is critical, perhaps Excel isn't the proper tool.
