Thanks again for your reply. I have thought about using an external template as you have described. Here is my situation: The file contains confidential information to be sent out to selected group of people, say executives, and are deposited in a restricted access drive. They in turn will do the "extraction" and send them to a level down, say directors. The directors will also extract them to the manager levels and they will be the ones to make the initial decision based on the information from the file they have given. The function of these workbooks contain data validation, electronic signature, a special budget calculator, and to consolidate the managers' input back to the original files. I want to retain these functionality each time then they do an extraction. Since there could be potentially hundreds of users and they could be working offsite or offline, so external template would not be feasible

Could you elaborate the sendkey method? I thought it doesn't work with project password protection.