Can you lock cells so data can't be referenced?
 

I need to protect data from being referenced. I can hide the tab, password
protect - but you can go to another tab and reference the worksheet data and
it is visible.

Can you lock cells so data can't be referenced?
 

LGMART1 wrote...
I need to protect data from being referenced. I can hide the tab, password
protect - but you can go to another tab and reference the worksheet data and
it is visible.

Nope. This is impossible in Excel. Anything stored in a worksheet cell
can be accessed by any formula referencing that cell. That's just how
Excel is MEANT to work, so there's no prospect that this would ever
change.

That said, you could use various forms of trickery. Simplest is
obfuscation, meaning adding a lot of estraneous text to any cell
containing your actual data. You'd need a systematic way to filter the
real data out of the entire cells' contents, but this could be done
relatively efficiently using only formulas. There are various forms of
lightweight encryption, but they'd slow down recalc unless you used to
VBA functions to decrypt. There's also the trick of storing data in
text box controls in hidden worksheets, but you'd have no choice but
to use VBA to access the contents of those text boxes.

None of these tricks would prevent anyone who knows how to bypass
internal password security from unprotecting your workbook, worksheets
and VBA projects and unhiding everything. The simple if unwelcome fact
is that nothing stored in an Excel workbook file is robustly protected.

Can you lock cells so data can't be referenced?
 

If the data is within the same workbook, it can be referenced.

In fact it could be referenced from another workbook.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:27:01 -0700, LGMART1
wrote:

I need to protect data from being referenced. I can hide the tab, password
protect - but you can go to another tab and reference the worksheet data and
it is visible.