Lock Excel Document after a certain Date

Question

How can I cripple an excel document after a certain date? I want it to become unusable after, say, 12/31/2009.

I was thinking about putting one of those Must Enable Macros things in there that hides all the sheets on close and leaves one tab that says you must enable macros. Then having an on open macro that unhides all those tabs, but also will close itself if after a certain date. This has a few drawbacks in that someone could just enter in the macro code (without macros enabled) and change the expiration date... or even just change their system time. Any thoughts about good ways to do it? Is my method pretty much as good as you can get? or are there better ways out there?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You might want to have a look at Microsoft's Information Rights Management (IRM) technology. IRM lets you control which users are permitted to read, edit, print etc the content of a document. It is also possible to specify an expiration date.

IRM requires you to either have an ActiveDirectory infrastructure with a domain controller or you may use the IRM service hosted by Microsoft.

For further details check out Controlling workbook access in Excel with Information Rights Management.

Answer 2

Dan, I am not sure of the purpose you are trying to lock the excel sheet. However if you write the macro then you can password protect the VBA code so that no changes are made to the code.

Having said so, there is still a possibility to have workarounds and access the excel file; no method can be foolproof.

Cheers...