vba – Protecting Excel Worksheet Data From Savvy User

I’m creating a excel application that will be distributed to my associates. Based permissions I need to disable access to certain sheets and features. I’ve been able to protect and hide sheets but a savvy user is able to iterate over hidden worksheets internally or externally to expose data. I need to stop that.

Here’s the process:

When the workbook opens a query to remote database is made to return set of user permissions. Then those permissions are printed to worksheet called “PERMISSIONS”.

This code below iterates over worksheet permissions to find a particular setting by passing in column name.

CheckPerm "Timesheet"

Public Function CheckPerm(nPermColTarget As String) As Boolean
Dim Counter As Integer
Dim x As Integer
Dim y As Integer

    Counter = 3
      Do Until Sheet7.Cells(Counter, 1).Value = Associate_Name
        Counter = Counter + 1
      Loop
    y = Counter

    Counter = 2
      Do Until Sheet7.Cells(2, Counter).Value = nPermColTarget
        Counter = Counter + 1
      Loop
    x = Counter

   If Sheet7.Cells(y, x).Value = "ON" Then
      CheckPerm = True
      GrntDenySheetAccess nPermColTarget, y, x, CheckPerm
   Else
   ' "OFF"
      CheckPerm = False
      GrntDenySheetAccess nPermColTarget, y, x, CheckPerm
   End If
End Function


Private Sub GrntDenySheetAccess(nPermColTarget As String, y As Integer, _ 
x As Integer, CheckPerm As Boolean)

Select Case nPermColTarget

   ' Sheet1
    Case "Timesheet"

       If CheckPerm = True Then
          Sheet1.Unprotect "pass"
          Sheet1.Visible = xlSheetVisible
       End If

       If CheckPerm = False Then
          Sheet1.Protect "pass"
          Sheet1.Visible = xlSheetVeryHidden
       End If

 End Select

End Sub

But even though sheet1 is hidden and protected, I can still iterate over hidden sheet1’s content to access info. Anyway to stop that?

Thanks

Tags: excelexcel, vba