How do I prevent someone from deleting a workbook?

[Guest]

When I protect a workbook so that users cannot modify it without knowing the
password, what prevents the user from doing the following:
1. Open the workbook in read-only mode (I do want others to be able to read
the workbook).
2. Select save as and give the file a new name.
3. Delete the original (password protected) workbook.
4. Rename the new (unprotected workbook) to the name of the original
workbook.
5. Edit the workbook and then save the changes.

 

[Guest]

'Cause when you save the protected workbook, it also saves the protection.
Even when it is renamed, the protection remains.

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

JSP,

You're close. But I was hoping no one would start spreading that method
around. You can protect the workbook (not the sheet) to prevent your method
from being used within the workbook at the worksheets level (copying to
another sheet). For file-level work (your example -- copying to another
file), you can disallow deleting the file with your network or operating
system permissions.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Absolutely nothing.

I always kept a back up copy and would look at the time/date stamp -- although
there's nothing stopping them from modifying that, either.

If you share this on a network drive, you may want to ask your IT folks for
another sharename--only you (and trusted coworkers (when you're out of the
office) can write, but all can read.

But this will only stop people from overwriting your file--it won't stop them
from saving locally and using that copy.

 

[Guest]

What you want is Adobe PDF. We use it to 'lock' Excel sheets. Everyone can
look at the sheet but no one can change it.

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat available and don't want to buy it, you can
subscribe for a monthly fee at Adobe.com. If you won't use it enough to make
even that worthwhile, Adobe provides 5 free samples. You select the file on
your computer and Adobe will email you the file converted to PDF. You could
create a new email address at yahoo.com or hotmail.com and get 5 free
conversions for each new email address.

 

[Ragdyer]

There was a rather long thread a couple of weeks ago about the morality of
using these groups to proliferate the procedures and codes for breaking
passwords, considering that the identity of the questioner could not be
verified in any way as being legally empowered to have such access to any
particular XL file.

I believe what you have done here, although certainly not innovative, to say
the least, is use these groups to foster the misappropriation of something
that each one of us here depends on ... software.