CODEWITHSUNDEEP
excelexcel-2007
NDraskovic
NDraskovic

Reputation: 706

Disabling user from unhiding columns in Excel

I have an Excel file that I need to send to another company for processing. The Excel file contains personal data about my customers that I need to hide. Is it possible to hide this data so that the person working on processing the file cannot unhide the column (of course I have to be able to unhide it once I receive the processed file). The processing process adds 2 new columns to the file and sorts it (so these functionalities need to stay enabled). If this is not possible, is there a way to encrypt the data in specific columns so that the data inside them is not shown.

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1747

Answers (1)

K_B
K_B

Reputation: 3678

You can hide a column and then protect the sheet, however a clever person can make a formula in another column that will refer to that column:

Say you hide A:A, then a person will put into B1: =A1 and copy that for all cells in B:B.

Now the best way would be to add a column with unique ID to all your records and then create a second copy of THAT file where you delete the columns you don't want to share.

When you get the file back you can either copy paste the removed columns from your local file OR you can use for example a VLOOKUP() function for matching ID's to return the deleted data.

Good luck

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions