Protection vs. copy/paste (2000 SR1)

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I have a spreadsheet that I use to do sales quotes for customers. It contains a column with my cost in it, and another column for markup. I want to hide these two columns, and protect the sheet, so I can e-mail the file to my customers. But anyone can just copy and paste the entire spreadsheet into another blank spreadsheet, and see the hidden columns. Is there a solution to this. I cannot create macros, and I think they would scare my customers anyway. I don’t want to delete these two columns every time I do a quote because I’m sure I will forget. Any help is greatly appreciated…Neil

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Link your cells to another workbook….
Put a little hyperlink in your *working* file that takes you to your client version so you can easily see the reflected changes.

Or you can do the same thing in the workbook and have someone create the code you’d need to have a *Send this worksheet only to client*….

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Another thought is this: instead of mailing your working file to your customers, do a File Save As, give the new file a different name (possibly the customer’s name, perhaps impressing the customer), convert the formulas to values in the new version and then delete the two columns of confidential data. Wouldn’t take much time at all, avoids macros and links, and protects your data.

Good luck,

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Excel is not very secure. There are password crackers all over the net for XL files. If I was sending an XL file to a coustomer that contained data that I really didn’t want them to see, I would use Cope/Paste Special – Values to convert all formulas to constant values and then delete all data that I didn’t want them to see.

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