proprietary spreadsheet protection

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We have a proprietary spreadsheet that may be used in litigation. Is there a way to have the spreadsheet work, but
(1) hide all formulas from prying eyes.
(2) be unusable after a certain date, or better yet, say 2 months after its first use.

thanks.

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When you say “a proprietary spreadsheet”, do you mean that it is:
1. an Excel spreadsheet with proprietary contents, or
2. a non-Excel spreadsheet ?
If the latter, what spreadsheet is it ?

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I am uncertain of the version of Excel that you are using however, if you select the cells you wish to protect. Look in the Format Cells dialogue and choose Protection, Lock and Hide cells. When Protection is applied to the sheet, the formulas will be hidden. As for your 2nd request. I have seen over the years, code floating around that sets a timer to lock up a spreadsheet after a certain amount of time. That being said, I’m sure there would be ways to get around this. Have you considered simply saving your workbooks in PDF format?

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The lock and hide would work. Thanks.
As for pdf, the other side has to be able to “test” the results against their method.

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When I googled “vba code timed spreadsheet lock” I found a number of discussion links on this topic, including a company that will sell you a solution (I have no idea how good/bad it its). So there are some resources out there. Best of luck.

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There are many many programmes out there that can easily “crack” password protectred spreadsheets. You have to look at military strength encryption. I tested a couple of third party solutions a few years ago that made calculations/formulas non viewable but came to the conclusion that they were too clumsy. A possible thought could be to have a separate :input” spreadsheet for the third party that links to say a calculating spreadsheet on a thumb drive, with both the drive and spreadsheet protected/endrypted. Then the 3rd party enter variables into the input spreadsheet, which returns the answers based on the calculation spreadsheet formulas. Good luck

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