Excel Formulas Protection

The main task of Excel workbook copy protection is to protect workbook cell formulas in such a way that no one can fetch them.

If the spreadsheet formula protection is not strong enough then anyone who gets permission to open your spreadsheet, (even if it was protected with a password, activation key and/or hardware locking), may copy all of the data and formulas (manually or by using some software) into another unprotected workbook and use your intellectual property without any restrictions.

XCell Compiler compiles all formulas from workbook into binary code and removes them from the xls cells.

In order to create the strongest Excel formula protection, we have created our own calculation engine to substitute the original Excel calculation engine in the compiled workbook while Excel itself is used for formatting and showing of calculation results. Our calculation engine manipulates binary code algorithms created from the original Excel workbook text formulas. The original Excel formulas are removed from the compiled workbook. Restoring the original spreadsheet formulas from the binary code is impossible.

This is the only real Excel workbook formulas protection.

All other approaches, such as locking cell formulas or hiding them with standard Excel worksheet password protection, are not secure. If you use any other approach, then your workbook formulas may be recovered with software which you may easily find on the Internet.

How to protect workbook formulas as strong as possible

The Excel workbook formula protection is the main feature of the XCell Compiler and is present in all product licenses. To securely protect cell formulas in your workbook, you just need to compile your workbook with XCell Compiler.
If you downloaded and installed our product then just follow these simple steps:

Open the workbook you want to compile.
Select ‘DoneEx’ item in the Excel main menu and select the ‘Compile’ item
Select compilation options and press ‘Compile’ button on the compilation form.