Excel file to be restricted from opening with any other formats

Question

I would like to know that i have an excel file with 18 sheets and it should be opend with any other versions.

for example if i right click on the file and select open with open office the same is being opened. i would like to lock this.

Answer 1

not possible. The user or OS decides which programs to invoke.

The best you can do is to obfuscate the data from being read, except with the correct program.

Answer 2

That's not strictly correct. You could create a macro that is tied to the Workbook_Open event that checks to see which version of Excel is being used (i.e. Application.Version). For example, you could try doing something like the following:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
    If Int(Application.Version) <> 11 Then 
       Workbook.Saved = True
       Workbook.Close
    End If
End Sub

However, this won't work if users have macros disabled and I have no idea whether it would work on OpenOffice either. I do know that OpenOffice has a VBA equivalent, but don't know enough about the object models to say whether an Excel macro will behave the exact same way in OpenOffice.

I suspect that the best option is to password-protect your workbook and include a macro that checks to see which version is being used. Not a fool-proof approach but probably the closest you're going to get.