protecting a workbook from deletion

[Erich Duff]

All,

I doubt this can be done, but any input would be greatly appreciated.

A doorknob in my office just deleted an extremely important file. Luckily, we back up our server every night and I recovered yesterday's copy of it. However, this workbook is edited by three or four different people up to 20 or 30 times a day. So everything we've done today is lost and needs to be researched and entered again.

Is there a way to allow people to edit the book, but not actually delete it? And I'm talking, not be allowed to right-click-delete, that sort of thing.

I guess, failing that, the only thing I can think of is to create a BeforeClose event macro that will save a backup of the book every time it's closed. Whaddaya think?

Erich

 

[Norie]

A doorknob in my office

Erich

Where do you work? Inanimate objects that can not only operate a computer but delete Excel worksheets.

I'm not up much on protection but could you not protect the workbook/worksheet and still allow user input.

 

[Erich Duff]

Hey, Norie,

Oh, inanimate object is right. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually know how to operate a computer, just how to mess it up

I don't know much about protection either, but it seems like there's no way to actually protect the book from being deleted. Even if I make it read-only, it merely asks the user if deletion is really what it wants to do. Which still doesn't seem to stop certain people clicking "yes". And because the file's on a server and not a local drive, there's no Recycle Bin, even--once it's gone, it's gone. Which is a pretty dumb setup, if you ask me.

Erich

 

[highndry]

Erich Duff

You can ask your network engineer to have the directory to be protected. In other words users will be able to read and save but will not have access to delete the file in that subdirectory/folder.

 

[Erich Duff]

Hi Highndry,

Excellent suggestion. I have administrator access to the server and have been playing around with that idea. It's taking some work to get it to work properly, but I've never done it before and didn't realize I could. Thanks again for the tip, I definitely like that better than the BeforeClose idea, since that would mean setting up each individual file to run that macro. Protecting the entire folder and its contents is a heck of a lot easier.

Cheers!

Erich