Month: February 2023

Protect VBA code

This is an upgrade from Lance’s Online VBA Hiding Tool – HideMyVBA.com, which is a FREE tool/service that you can use to hide your VBA code from people who may be using your workbooks. This can help protect your intellectual property.  The tool will protect VBA code from being viewed or modified, yet it will still preserve the full functionality of the workbook.

It has 2 options to protect code:
  1. Making modules very hidden (very basic protection)
  2. Modifying the signature on GC=/CMG=/DPB= to GC./CMG./DPB (better protection). The best explanation I found came from this post.
I made some improvements over the original author’s version:
  • restored all the offuscated code
  • get rid of the Kill statements (commented out). If really needed, better use Recycle bin, which needs a lot of code on the other hand
  • get rid of Dir statements also -in order not to mess with defaults-
  • fullfilled variable declarations -all modules set to Option Explicit-
  • made tool 2003 compatible (added #If were needed). Most of the code came from this post from Đức Thanh Nguyễn, and some other answers found there.
  • improved the performance of worksheet crack (the password is incrementally computed, not need to create on every step), and a DoEvents inserted in order to stop process if needed.
  • added some associated functions that were missing (ExportModules did let user select a folder -and was pointing to a not declared variable-). 
There should be made the same disclaimer note as on the original tool: 
Run this code at your own risk. This software is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In no event shall the author or contributors be held liable for any damages arising in any way from the use of this software. The creator of this workbook is not responsible for corruption to workbooks, damages that may occur while using this workbook or loss of data that might be associated with the workbook. Always keep a backup copy of all of your workbooks before running any programs that modify them. Do not run this program on a master copy.
Download my version from HideMyVBA_improved. It’s realeased under the same Creative commons license (Creative Commons) the original author (Lance) stated for his version -although he not declared which one it’s-.

There are other options on the net, but this is free, and open source.