Dave --

Your first suggestion sounds workable. Thank you. I will add passwords to
the 3 hidden books.

Giving the user 5 books but only seeing one will not be a problem.

Larry

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
I don't think so.

You'd have to give 4 different workbooks to the customer. You'll ask them
to
store the files somewhere. They'll have to see the 4 files when they
store
them.

If you can get by that problem, you could save each of the 3 workbooks
hidden.

Open all 3 and do this for each one:
Window|Hide (and hide the single(?) window to that workbook.

Now close excel and answer Yes to "do you want to save your changes".

Now when one of those three workbooks is opened, it'll be hidden.

It won't stop all--but some/most people won't even notice.

====
I think I'd might give them a 5th workbook. It's only purpose is to open
the 3
hidden workbooks first, then open the "real" workbook. If you have links
between workbooks, it'll be quicker to update these links when they're all
open.

But anyone who is curious won't be fooled.

===
Another option (that is also not foolproof). Move those other worksheets
into
your real workbook. But hide the worksheets.

Protect the workbook so they can't easily unhide the worksheets. (But
this,
too, is easily broken.)

My rule is: If you don't want to share the data, don't put it in excel.





L Mehl wrote:

Hello --

I need help in hiding 3 workbooks while maintaining their ability to
link to
and calculate for a 4th workbook.

Our sales-support application identifies hardware and prices for a
customer/user-specified system.
It consists of 4 workbooks:
Customer
Engineering
FinMktSales
FinCalculations

Each links to the other 3 to pass and retrieve information. Customer
does
the data entry and results-display; the other 3 are calculators, not to
be
viewed by the user.

Our plan is to
- populate Customer.xls with our best guess of starting values
- populate the other 3 with current engineering data, prices, etc.,
relevant
to the specific sales opportunity
- give the set of 4 to the user

We want the user to be able to test various scenarios he/she defines in
Customer.xls, where that workbook will feed the other 3 and link to and
display various calculated results to the user.

Is it possible to hide the 3 calculators and protect them from being
viewed,
in away so that links still work?

Thanks for any direction on this.

Larry Mehl

--

Dave Peterson