Thanks so much to everyone who helped with this re this thread! I am
indebted tremendously to anyone who responded and helped out.

As some might be aware, I've been at this for a couple of weeks due to
pressures from work. My goal was to hopefully protect all the many
workbooks I had to create here so that users after me wouldn't corrupt the
docts. re the macro functionality.

Despite tremendous efforts on everyone's part, I've come to the conclusion
that this can't be done; at least, not by a power user newbie such as myself
under the time constraints, esp., that are also involved.

I got a lot of syntax from this group and it all works quite well. But when
a sheet is protected, a lot of functions are locked out. There was other
syntax that took care of the major stuff re unprotecting then protecting
again, but as I've been working with a protected test sheet today, I found
that many, many other little functions don't work and are greyed out. So
much so that I see only a much more advanced programmer being able to handle
them all. I have neither the time nor the expertise, time because it takes
someone like me much longer to come up with solutions than an expert. My
supervisor is away today and it's relatively quiet, so I was able to devote
a lot of time to so-call finish up the workbooks.

What did it was when I started trying to work around the locked out items,
yes, but the clincher was no UNDO. With specific commands, it's easy enough
to go to the groups via google and look things up in the archives but it
wasn't till I was looking at all the msgs re UNDO that I became hopelessly
discouraged and knew that it was time to call it a day. What sounded the
death knell on protection was that undo does not work on
programmatically-deleted items and that a complex vba script would be needed
to remember the data before any deletions could be restored.

So that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

A MAJOR item for the Excel wishlist - though have to say the list is quite
small as Excel is super fantastic! - a way to protect BUTTONS only that
doesn't stop everything else from working as when one has to protect a
workbook or worksheet but that also doesn't stop the buttons from working
<g.

So, here's the conclusion to the whole saga - I will in all likelihood have
to leave the sheets unprotected since the obstacles are much greater to the
user if I don't. And the knowledge that within very little time, they'll
corrupt the document to one degree or another. They'll always be able to
use the books manually, it's just that I'm sure somewhere down the road,
someone is going to delete a button or two and will lose a lot of
functionality.

Ah well. I certainly gave it 110% effort and that's all that counts.

Thanks everyone, once again. Above and beyond is the help I've recvd. This
contract was unique. I doubt I'll ever have to do this type of thing again
re Excel. But I do also take away valuable knowledge thanks to the Excel
groups.

Cheers!

"StargateFan" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 3 Jul 2004 18:58:57 +0800, "JulieD"
wrote:

[snip]