Question

Opening a protected workbook with VBA

Asked by: stevbe

I am looking for verification of some odd behavior I sumbled across ...
I am using code to open a password protected workbook without passing the password in (I am building a generic add-in utility) and that works fine but the odd thing is that when Excel prompts for the password I can see the first sheet of data. This does not happen when I double click the same file in Explorer.  Right ... not sure it is important but I am using a separate xlApp object var so I can hide thta instance as soo as it is open ... kind of goes like this ...

in my main functrion I have ...
Set xlApp = New Excel.Application
Set wbOld = OpenWorkbook("Please select the OLD workbook.", strFileOld, xlApp)

the OpenWorkbook function (I am wrapping all the stupid generic errors for when they don't provide the correct password, if the file is already open etc.)
the important line is this ... (yes, I left out error handing and file path capture code)
 Set wb = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(strTemp, False, True)

this is where the separate instance of Excel becomes visible which makes sense because it has to ask for the password, but this is also where you can see the first worksheet even thought you have not provided the password yet !!!

TIA,
Steve

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Asked On
2008-03-31 at 12:20:14ID23283627
Tags

Microsoft

,

Excel

,

2003 SP3

Topic

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: zorvekPosted on 2008-03-31 at 12:38:47ID: 21248403

I tried this test on Excel 2003 SP3 and did not see an extra workbook:

Public Sub Test()
   Dim xlApp As Excel.Application
   Dim wb As Workbook
   Set xlApp = New Excel.Application
   Set wb = xlApp.Workbooks.Open("C:\TestOpenWithPassword.xls", False, True)
End Sub

Kevin

 

by: stevbePosted on 2008-03-31 at 12:48:35ID: 21248502

hmmm ... so you did not see the first worksheet of TestOpenWithPassword.xls while Excel was prompting you for the password?

OMG ... I got myself so wrapped up in code I did not realize what was really happening ... my utility asks twice for a workbook path (we are doing comparisons) and what was really happening was that the first workbook did not have a password so it opened (xlApp was not visible) and when it was opening the second one which did have a password, when xlApp did become visible I was seeing the first workbook in the background ... my two sample workbooks look very similar ... sheesh ... now i can remove all the extra code I just finished that passes a nullstring password and if it fails I was prompting for the pasword via a user form ... sigh ... at least it will be easy to rip all that out :-)

Thanks for the sanity check that proved I am ... well a little nutso as I just got back from vacation.

Steve

 

by: zorvekPosted on 2008-03-31 at 12:51:16ID: 21248523

A change of venue always helps get us out of those stuck kinds of places... :-)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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