Hide workbooks that drive another workbook

[L Mehl]

Hello --

I need help in hiding 3 workbooks while maintaining their ability to link to
and calculate for a 4th workbook.

Our sales-support application identifies hardware and prices for a
customer/user-specified system.
It consists of 4 workbooks:
Customer
Engineering
FinMktSales
FinCalculations

Each links to the other 3 to pass and retrieve information. Customer does
the data entry and results-display; the other 3 are calculators, not to be
viewed by the user.

Our plan is to
- populate Customer.xls with our best guess of starting values
- populate the other 3 with current engineering data, prices, etc., relevant
to the specific sales opportunity
- give the set of 4 to the user

We want the user to be able to test various scenarios he/she defines in
Customer.xls, where that workbook will feed the other 3 and link to and
display various calculated results to the user.

Is it possible to hide the 3 calculators and protect them from being viewed,
in away so that links still work?

Thanks for any direction on this.

Larry Mehl

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't think so.

You'd have to give 4 different workbooks to the customer. You'll ask them to
store the files somewhere. They'll have to see the 4 files when they store
them.

If you can get by that problem, you could save each of the 3 workbooks hidden.

Open all 3 and do this for each one:
Window|Hide (and hide the single(?) window to that workbook.

Now close excel and answer Yes to "do you want to save your changes".

Now when one of those three workbooks is opened, it'll be hidden.

It won't stop all--but some/most people won't even notice.

====
I think I'd might give them a 5th workbook. It's only purpose is to open the 3
hidden workbooks first, then open the "real" workbook. If you have links
between workbooks, it'll be quicker to update these links when they're all open.

But anyone who is curious won't be fooled.

===
Another option (that is also not foolproof). Move those other worksheets into
your real workbook. But hide the worksheets.

Protect the workbook so they can't easily unhide the worksheets. (But this,
too, is easily broken.)

My rule is: If you don't want to share the data, don't put it in excel.

 

[L Mehl]

Dave --

Your first suggestion sounds workable. Thank you. I will add passwords to
the 3 hidden books.

Giving the user 5 books but only seeing one will not be a problem.

Larry

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

If the workbooks have to be opened to be used, then you don't want to assign
passwords to them. At least not file passwords.

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

Dave --

Your first suggestion sounds workable. Thank you. I will add passwords to
the 3 hidden books.

Giving the user 5 books but only seeing one will not be a problem.

Larry

I don't think so.

You'd have to give 4 different workbooks to the customer. You'll ask

them

to
store the files somewhere. They'll have to see the 4 files when they store
them.

If you can get by that problem, you could save each of the 3 workbooks hidden.

Open all 3 and do this for each one:
Window|Hide (and hide the single(?) window to that workbook.

Now close excel and answer Yes to "do you want to save your changes".

Now when one of those three workbooks is opened, it'll be hidden.

It won't stop all--but some/most people won't even notice.

====
I think I'd might give them a 5th workbook. It's only purpose is to

open
the 3

hidden workbooks first, then open the "real" workbook. If you have links
between workbooks, it'll be quicker to update these links when they're

all

open.

But anyone who is curious won't be fooled.

===
Another option (that is also not foolproof). Move those other

worksheets

into
your real workbook. But hide the worksheets.

Protect the workbook so they can't easily unhide the worksheets. (But this,
too, is easily broken.)

My rule is: If you don't want to share the data, don't put it in excel.

to

 

[Dave Peterson]

But if the OP did use that helper workbook to open all the other workbooks, then
the OP could specify the password in the workbooks.open code.

If the workbooks have to be opened to be used, then you don't want to assign
passwords to them. At least not file passwords.

 

[L Mehl]

Dave and Tom --

Thanks for discussing this.

Dave ... a couple of questions:

- what is the "OP"?

I like the idea of using the helper workbook.

- How do I specify the password in the helper workbook's .open code and pass
it to the other workbooks?

Larry

 

[Dave Peterson]

OP=Original Poster (in this case, you!)

Take a look at Workbooks.open in VBA's help for an example.

If the password to open is always the same, this may get you started:

Option Explicit
Sub auto_open()

Dim myFileNames As Variant
Dim myPath As String
Dim iCtr As Long
Dim testStr As String

myPath = ThisWorkbook.Path
If Right(myPath, 1) <> "\" Then
myPath = myPath & "\"
End If

myFileNames = Array("book1.xls", "book2.xls", "book3.xls")

For iCtr = LBound(myFileNames) To UBound(myFileNames)
If WorkbookIsOpen(myFileNames(iCtr)) Then
'do nothing, it's already open
Else
testStr = ""
On Error Resume Next
testStr = Dir(myPath & myFileNames(iCtr))
On Error GoTo 0
If testStr = "" Then
MsgBox "Oh, oh. " & myFileNames(iCtr) & " wasn't found!" _
& vbLf & "Please contact me at xxx.xxx.xxxx!"
Else
Workbooks.Open Filename:=ThisWorkbook.Path & myFileNames(iCtr)
End If
End If
Next iCtr

'thisworkbook.Close savechanges:=false

End Sub
Function WorkbookIsOpen(myFileName As Variant) As Boolean
On Error Resume Next
WorkbookIsOpen = CBool(Len(Application.Workbooks(myFileName).Name) > 0)

 

[L Mehl]

Dave --

Thank you for this example. It gives me a great start ... password will
always be the same.

I will post a question to Tom's re: his comment
"If the workbooks have to be opened to be used, then you don't want to
assign passwords to them. At least not file passwords."

Larry

 

[L Mehl]

Tom --

Thank you.

I haven't yet implemented the code Dave suggests below, so I don't know
whether my hidden books must be "opened to be used".

I want the hidden books to not be visible to the user.

By "file password" to mean the one used to protect the workbook? If so,
then should I protect each sheet in each book?

Larry

If the workbooks have to be opened to be used, then you don't want to assign
passwords to them. At least not file passwords.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I think Tom's warning was to not use passwords if the other three workbooks were
to be opened manually (and you wanted to keep them "invisible") or if the
primary workbook had links to the other 3.

In either case, the user would have to specify the passwords to open/get access
to those 3 workbooks.

===
Workbooks can be protected via tools|protection inside excel--you can protect
the structure--no renaming of worksheets, no deleting of worksheets, no moving
of worksheets.

Workbooks can be protected from opening/modifying via the File|SaveAs dialog.
File|SaveAs|Tools|General Options (xl2002+ wording)
File|SaveAs|Options (in earlier versions)

(The file|saveAs password was what I was using in the suggested code.)

The protection via tools|protection is pretty simple to break. J.E. McGimpsey
has code that will unprotect the workbook/worksheet in just moments:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/removepwords.html

There are commercial password breakers that will break the File|SaveAs password.
http://www.lostpassword.com/

And if you've got the password embedded in your code, you'll want to protect
that, too.

Inside the VBE with your project selected:
tools|VBAProject Properties|Protection tab

But this protection can be broken easily, too.

And even worse, if the users notice that there are multiple workbooks open, they
could just unhide the workbooks and take a look.

If you're doing this for security purposes, realize that it'll keep out the
not-so-curious. But it won't stop the dedicated.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Don't let me distract you. Go ahead and work with Dave.

 

[L Mehl]

Dave and Tom --

Thanks again to you both.

Larry