Disable Print for any open Workbook

[tharkun]

All, I work in a manufacturing environment and we have several computers on the floor available for the operators to reference drawings/quality criteria, etc. But we have found that we need to disable their ability to print anything out of Excel for security/quality reasons.

My first thought was to have a macro look at the computer name and disable any printing based on an if...then structure. But, I can't get it to work in the personal.xls file. It works on any one workbook; but I need it to work in every workbook that could be opened on the shop computers.

I've persused the old threads here; but can't find exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks in advance!

tharkun

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

Welcome to MrExcel.

You need Application Events:

http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/AppEvent.aspx

and the WorkbookBeforePrint event.

 

[tharkun]

Thanks Andrew. I did some more digging and research and got the macro to work well (enough for our needs at least). But in having a meeting with some of our staff to show it off, the question was raised about creating a tracking file that would log anytime a change was made to the file.

I know it's easy enough to open a new or existing file and edit it with VBA; but my question is, is it possible to have it do that WITHOUT the operator being aware of it? In other words, can I use VBA to edit another, separate excel file without the file being visible to the user on the computer? Can it be done without actually opening the tracking file on the desktop?

Hope that makes sense, I'm a self-admitted noob at this and self-taught. Thanks again.

tharkun

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

You could hide the workbook that records the changes, but it needs to be open.