Security/Protection

S

Sprinks

We estimate construction projects, primarily for architectural clients at an
early stage of design, to enable them to make meaningful value engineering
decisions before committing the labor to fully detailed drawings.

Our estimate is delivered as an unprotected Excel worksheet so that our
client can perform "what-if" scenarios. Normally, this is not an issue,
however, recently a client changed our estimate, printed it with our logo,
and distributed it to others.
Although we believe this was an error of omission, it nevertheless presented
a number that we did not develop as our work product.

We are looking for opinions on how we might meet the dual goals of
protecting ourselves, while permitting our client to interact with the
worksheet. It seems that distributing a password-protected sheet would
meet the first goal but not the second. We could provide a second copy of
the
worksheet without our logo as their "working copy", and protect the original,
but this seems inelegant.

Thanks for all responses.

Sprinks
 
K

Kamal

Hi,
Try this...

Select entire worksheet and "unlock" all the cells.

Now, select the area of your "estimate working" or if you prefer specific
range / ranges - which you want not to be altered and lock the cells.

Protect the worksheet. - with password - Allow to select both locked and
unlocked cells

In this case you customer can use your working and work on estimate but can
not alter any part of your working.

Kamal
 
G

Gord Dibben

Sprinks

You can do as Kamal suggests but worksheet security is very weak and passwords
cracked easily.

See more here at John McGimpsey's site.

Bypassing the worksheet password is a matter of a few seconds work for
anyone who's interested enough to, say, find and read these newsgroups,
since macros and links to add-ins that break worksheet protection are
posted daily. See

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/removepwords.html

for an explanation of why worksheet protection is only protection
against inadvertent changes, not security.

Gord Dibben Excel MVP
 
S

Sprinks

Thanks to both Kamal and Gord.

It sounds like "security" is not achievable, but, then again, maybe all we
need is protection from inadvertent changes. We don't believe our clientele
means to misrepresent their work under our name; it's just that we've made it
easy for them. So perhaps a "What-If" tabbed page that contains all the
formulae from the official spreadsheet without our logos is the way to go.

Best regards.
Sprinks
 
Top