Making a spreadsheet very hidden

Excel 365 2016 2013 2010 2007
Using the Hide command you can hide the data and formulas from "inquisitive minds". But some of them still can use Unhide command. Nevertheless you can completely hide Excel spreadsheet so that it will be needed some VBA programming to unhide it.

To make an Excel sheet very hidden:

   1.   Activate the spreadsheet.

   2.   Select View -> Toolbars -> Control Toolbox. This displays the Control Toolbox toolbar.

Control Toolbox in Excel 2003

   3.   Click the Properties button on the Control Toolbox toolbar. This displays the Properties box, shown in the following figure.

Properties

   4.   In the Properties box, select the Visible option, and choose 2 - xlSheetVeryHidden.

Visible option in Excel 2003 spreadsheet

After performing these steps, the spreadsheet will be hidden, and it will not appear in the Unhide dialog box.

Be careful! After you make a sheet very hidden, you can't use the Properties box to unhide it because you won't be able to select the sheet! In fact, the only way to unhide such a sheet is to use a VBA macro.

This VBA statement will unhide Sheet1 in the active workbook:

ActiveWorkbook.spreadsheets("Sheet1").Visible = True

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