Monday, November 01, 2004

Excel Workbook Open Read Only Recommended

I had an email today from a client asking how to make a file read only for users. Here is my response.

Simply open the file, then click File - Save As and then in the dialog box click the Tools dropdown. From this select General Options. Check the Read-only recommended box and add a password to open and modify. If you make these two passwords different then you can hand out the password to open but not the password to modify. This way people are stuck with read only as the only option when opening the file. Note you will need to verify both the open and the modify password.

If you save over the existing file you will be asked to confirm that you want to overwrite the file.