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Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

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    Unhappy Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    I am looking for a solution (if it exists) beyond hidden and very hidden worksheets. I have a document that is circulated internally within the organization but it has happened multiple times that a clumsy employee has CC'd an outsider in their email and this information has been made available to the outside world. I currently have an encrypt/decrypt add-in that renders the crucial info (in one column) useless but usually the unencrypted version goes out of the company due to sloppy work.

    Is there a way/method to create a bulletproof file, or just a very hard to break into type of Excel workbook? It will contain certain numbers and financial information that our company employees can access (with a password) but should be useless if someone has access to this file but doesn't have the password. Any suggestions are welcome because time and time again I've had my hard work leaked to outsider eyes.

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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    Based on similar requests here in the past, no. I think it would be more sensible to look at preventing colleagues from attaching files to outgoing E-mails.
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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information


    Never use Excel for really sensitive information …

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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    True, but what I cannot control and oversee is them replying or forwarding emails. So in order to dummy-proof it for them further, I'm looking for a solution. They already know that they aren't supposed to send this particular sheet out, but IF it ever happens that someone sends it out by mistake, the data won't be accessible without a password.

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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    Quote Originally Posted by Marc L View Post

    Never use Excel for really sensitive information …
    Sensitive information in the sense that it contains our cost information and markup etc. for the products that we sell. No company likes to reveal their base price + markup. We need it internally for preparing quotes etc., but some employees can be sloppy with their work.

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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information


    With Excel 2010 (if updated) and later, the safer way is to password protect the workbook for its opening.

    For lower versions than 2010, no serious protection exists so it's too easy to bypass …

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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    As has been said Excel is not bullet proof as far as security is concerned.

    The nearest I can think of would be to Use the Workbook Before Save event procedure to do the following


    1. Make the sensitive sheets VeryHidden
    2. Protect the Workbook Structure with a password

    In addition you could Protect the VBA environment (Lock Project for Viewing) with a strong password so that anyone who dives behind the scenes into VBA to see what sheets or macros there are in the workbook won't see anything.

    You'd then need a password entry macro so that genuine users could unprotect the structure of the workbook in order to make changes.
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    Re: Need help with password protecting an Excel workbook with sensitive information

    It is not that difficult to remove the password from VBE, irrespective of how strong it is.

    Best thing would be to restrict attachments to e-mail, and perhaps only send quotes out via .pdf.

    I personally, wouldn't trust anything I didn't want anyone else to see with Excel, password protected or otherwise - it simply isn't robust enough. Not Microsoft's fault : they've never made any promises about it being secure.

    HTH

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