A common gripe from many Excel users is the harm, inadvertent or otherwise, caused by workplace colleagues with whom they share their carefully constructed and designed spreadsheets.
In particular, you might well go to great lengths to set up the (confidential?) source data used by the functions and formulas in one spreadsheet. and to keep it secure, store them separately in another sheet in the same workbook. You can, of course, simply hide this sheet via a simple right-click on the sheet tab and choosing the “Hide” command. This can be an effective strategy with many users who don’t know Excel to any great degree of sophistication, and are hence unlikely to invest much time looking for sheets that they can’t see anyway and of whose very existence they are unaware.
Problem is, any mildly curious or relatively “savvy” colleague can easily “unhide” the sheet via the same simple pathway used to hide it i.e right-mouse click. Thus, this is not by any means a secure means of hiding a sheet and hence might mayhem, and in extreme cases, fisticuffs ensue.
However, despair ye not, Excel brethren. For the truly savvy, there exists a more impregnable way to make a sheet “really” hidden; a method far less likely to be rumbled by inquisitive workmates. It involves going “backstage” In Excel and visiting the Code window, again by right-clicking the intended sheet tab and selecting the “View Code” command. You might imagine that this environment might necessitate a knowledge of the arcane world of VisualBasic programming, but happily, no such knowledge is required. The Code window should display two window panes on its right-hand side – the Project Explorer and the Properties pane. (If it does not,these panes are easily available via the View menu.)
In the Properties pane, you will find a comprehensive, alphabetic list of the current sheet’s properties, the last of which is “Visible”. The menu on its immediate right contains three choices, the last of which rejoices in the name “VeryHidden”, (By the way, the second option”Hidden” is equivalent to the “Hide” command on the right-click menu.) If you choose “VeryHidden” in this menu, the sheet tab will disappear from normal view, and the “Unhide” command on the usual right-click menu will also be greyed out and hence unavailable. Therefore, this particular stratagem is far more secure than the aforementioned default “Hide”command.
Of course, the obvious loophole is that another suitably savvy Excel user could also reverse-engineer this method. But you might consider that while another user could randomly discover the default “Unhide” command, the average user is far less likely to know about the Code window and the “VeryHidden” property. By this means might you better safeguard your crucial spreadsheets from your colleagues’ sabotage, be it inadvertent or deliberate.