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Programmatically protect workbooks

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You can protect a Microsoft Office Excel workbook so that users cannot add or delete worksheets, and also unprotect the workbook programmatically. You can optionally specify a password, indicate whether you want the structure protected (so users cannot move sheets around), and indicate whether you want the workbook's windows protected.

Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and VSTO Add-in projects for Excel. For more information, see Features available by Office application and project type.

Protecting a workbook does not stop users from editing cells. To protect the data, you must protect the worksheets. For more information, see How to: Programmatically protect worksheets.

The following code examples use a variable to contain a password that is obtained from the user.

Protect a workbook that is part of a document-level customization

To protect a workbook

  1. Call the Protect method of the workbook and include a password. To use the following code example, run it in the ThisWorkbook class, not in a sheet class.

    this.Protect(getPasswordFromUser, missing, missing);

To unprotect a workbook

  1. Call the Unprotect method, passing a password if it is required. To use the following code example, run it in the ThisWorkbook class, not in a sheet class.

    this.Unprotect(getPasswordFromUser);

Protect a workbook by using an application-level Add-in

To protect a workbook

  1. Call the Protect method of the workbook and include a password. This code example uses the active workbook. To use this example, run the code from the ThisAddIn class in your project.

    this.Application.ActiveWorkbook.Protect(getPasswordFromUser);

To unprotect a workbook

  1. Call the Unprotect method of the active workbook, passing a password if it is required. To use this example, run the code from the ThisAddIn class in your project.

    this.Application.ActiveWorkbook.Unprotect(getPasswordFromUser);

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