I have three linked spreadsheet one of which is a summary sheet that pulls data from our AS/400 system using ODBC links and some from the other sheets. We recently had a process audit and have been told that all spreadsheets must now be password protected. These sheets are old Excel 97 era files. they are used by many people and accesed from other sheet via VBA as well. When we added the passwords to the files the main summary sheet was corrupted and the summary Pivot table removed in the repair processs. This has been reconstituted andseveral times and it is always the same. Why does adding a file level password cause the pivot table not to work. We would struggle to convert these file and all af their connections to xlsx or xlsm files as the VBA and all of the formula links would fail.