Workbook protection

Hi all,

I have no idea if this is possible. Wondering if there is a way in which to restrict what a user can view when they access a spreadsheet.


I have a costing template which gives a manager the ability to enter multiple key information in multiple cells which trigger different formula to determine what their budget for the year is going to be.

The fields have to include salary and wages rates for their staff. However, I don't want a manager to be able to access the spreadsheet and lookup the pay details for anybody who is not part of their team.

Therefore, what I'm wondering is whether there is a way in Excel for me to request that each person who opens the spreadsheet has to provide a password or a code that I provide each manager? Depending on which code they enter only certain sheets in the spreadsheet will be available to them.

For example; when manager A opens the spreadsheet and he enters "0246" or some other pre-determined code then only the employees in Team A will be viewable. When manager B opens the spreadsheet and enters her own pre-determined code then she will be able to view both team B and Team C as she looks after both teams.


The Review Tab seems a little to clumsy for this purpose but I probably don't know everything it can do.

Hi dflak,

thanks for this reply. It's been a while but I have now come back to this question.

I have a couple of criteria that make this a little different.


I'm using payroll data for this particular model so it's a little sensitive. The model is to be used by various managers but those particular managers should only be able to see the costings for their own staff - no others.

The MS Query idea works well in that I can extract updated payroll data through this query. Not sure how I'll get the data into the Excel workbook that runs the model but there are probably a couple of options such as running a macro. Would be ideal if there is an easy way that I could run the query through an active x button in Excel or something similar. If you have a hint on that I'm very much all ears.

However, the next stage is that, once the data is in the workbook it can't be visible to the managers. I can hide the sheet and password protect it so that should be ok. However, I won't be here - this is a project for me where I come in and set up the model for the business to use after I'm gone. What I need is to be able to have it set up so that each of the managers has a different PIN or password that they enter in the model which allows them to view costs only for certain staff. The only way I can think of to do this is to have a password set up and an IF query to test if the password is correct. If so then a macro which would take that password and use it to filter which staff members will be picked up and bought into the model. Again, any hints as to an easier or slicker way of doing this would be gratefully appreciated.