"Licence" an excel spreadsheet

Hi all

My specific question is:

I have a spreadsheet that I have developed specifically to help with different bank criteria and the processing of loan applications for my role as a mortgage broker. How can I set this up so that if I let someone use my spreadsheet on their pc that it can't be distributed and used by other people?


Further background:

The spreadsheet, to be fair, is not that complicated, and I am sure basic by a more experienced persons standards. But it takes into account the tax rates, investment loans, rates and payments for a range of banks and has taken time for me to produce. So if people are going to want it then I would rather protect my time and interests with a license or something?
Could I put in a hidden formula that links to a file stored locally to identify preferred users laptops??

I am interested in learning more about making the spreadsheet more advanced perhaps, but don't really know where to begin to learn how to do so.

Any ideas would be great on how to advance my skills or the protection of the work done, thanks.


Vim

You need to force users to enable macros and protect the VBA project with a long and random password. Then you can use VBA to get the drive serial number and check against a hidden sheet.

A simple thing would be to close the workbook if the windows logon doesn't match, something like this

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
Dim sh As Worksheet
Sheets("Welcome").Visible = xlSheetVisible
For Each sh In Sheets
sh.Visible = xlSheetVeryHidden
Next sh
End Sub
 
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Dim sh As Worksheet
If Environ("username") <> "Simon" Then
Application.Quit
Else
For Each sh In Sheets
sh.Visible = xlSheetVisible
Next sh
Sheets("Welcome").Visible = xlSheetHidden
End If
End Sub

Don't forget to create a Welcome sheet, and the code goes in the ThisWorkbook module.

Originally Posted by Vim

Thanks, you guys are legends.

That sounds doable, the only quesiton being, can I set this up so I can list users (using Or rather than =??). Otherwise I would have to change it all the time for each update and each user. If you think I can list the users, can you show me how this might look in the code that you have shown above please and thank you...

Yes you can use OR but you have to understand that Excel security is NOT there to protect a product but merely to protect against inadvertent changes, any user above casual status or with a bit of determination will find a way round it. What i have given is a very simplistic version of protection, there is a lot more you can do but then you also need to understand VBA better first as you have to maintain it. The sheets are made xlSheetVeryHidden which means they can only be made visible by using vba and not from the worksheet menubar.

Lol, thanks for the edit shg!

Just trying to keep things tidy, Simon

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rojan,
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