Weird Excel issue, can't reproduce

Artereis

I've had to build some order forms in Excel for business partners to fill out. There are no macros on these forms, and the only thing protected is the workbook structure to keep a few tabs hidden. They were built in Office 2010.

We've had some people call in saying they're getting a password prompt when opening the file, and just hitting OK won't let them through. I can't reproduce this in house. Any ideas what might be going on?

Draygo

I am assuming your buisness partners are not using excel 2010? This may be an issue caused by different versions. You can try and create an .xls version (instead of .xlsx) and see if they still have issues.

Artereis

Latest call in was on 2010. I checked with one of our reps, and he said a couple of his BPs were able to get in just by hitting OK, but the most recent caller seems to be an issue.

Draygo

log on as a different user on your own computer and attempt to open that file. see if it gives you the same issues.

LaOs

If you just want to have those tabs hidden, I'd suggest you lock all the content on those tabs and protect those specific sheets. Then simply hide them and send that out. Someone would have to know the tabs were there and how to make them visible to even be able to see them, and then the content of the tabs is locked and protected, so even if they can see the data, they can't do anything to the sheets.

If you're worried about them actually seeing that data, you can fill in the cells and make all the text on the sheet the same colour, and then when you protect the sheet, don't allow formatting of cells (or even selecting of cells) and then no one will be able to read the content either.

This would prevent people from running into password issues, because it would only prompt for a password if they attempted to unlock the hidden tab (which they in all likelihood wouldn't even know existed).