Page 1 of Is there any way to password protect an excel document from any body trying to open it?

I have acquired a USB memory stick & was thinking of saving an execl document on it, but want to protect it from any onyone trying to open it with a password, incase if I loose the stick.
Is there any way of protecting it?

Thanx in advanx.

Yes there is, just open the Excel file and go to:

Tools -> Options

Under the Security tab there is a facility to password protect the document.

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& easily unlocked again by tools found on the net (its how I hacked & slashed my old accounts database to do what I wanted).

The casual opportunist should it be "lost "would look for porn on it & then wipe it & try to flog it down the pub.



I quite like the Helpdesk people in a benevolent (as opposed to malevolent) way as they do some valuable work in preventing us being inundated by every halfwit who can work a phone.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 11th May 2005, 00:51

yeah. MS security for documents is rubbish. At a place i worked they had an `important` document locked and password protected.

A quick export to HTML, view source and remove the password code later the document was edited with a few subtle swearwords and locked with a new password. That`ll learn em.

Your memory stick should have come with a bit of software installed on it to password protect the whole stick, or a to protect a section of it to put important douments in. At least my Crucial one did anyway.

Quote:
Yes there is, just open the Excel file and go to:

Tools -> Options

Under the Security tab there is a facility to password protect the document.


This only stops people from editing. I would like to lock it completely so that no one can open it. The stick did not come with any software (bought from SVP).

If you click on Tools / Protection then Protect Sheet you will be able to enter a password that you will have to enter if you want to edit the sheet.

As Gareth Williams said above, click on Tools / Options then click on the Security tab and there will be a box for you to enter the password. Type in a password and then click OK and you will be asked to enter the password again. Every time you go to open the document you will have to enter the password to open it.

This password is harder to crack than the protect sheet passwords which can be stripped in seconds. Choose a password which is at least 8 digits in length and contains lower and upper case letters and numbers and symbols if you want. This will slow down the password cracking as they won`t be able to use a dictionary attack.

If someone wants to they can still crack it with a program that cracks the encryption key but that could take anything up to a month.