Let’s state it straight every VBA developer is happy, when he can protect his own code. The VBE password is not secure protection, everyone with a few free hours and a good internet access can go around it. Thus, I was looking for possible solutions in that area, and the best one in the net that I found was Unviewable+.
Pretty much what Unviewable+ does can be summarized in the following – it takes your VBA project and locks it forever. When you press Alt+F11 in order to view the password prompt, you get the following screen:
Pretty decent idea, eh? The idea of making a viewable copy of the project (that still can be opened the normal way) in the same directory can probably save lots of nerves and a panic attack to the VBA developers.
This is how it look like. You create a simple VBA project.
Then you call the Unviewable+ from the ribbon.
Now is the time to exit the Excel file and to select the file that should be locked. The window stays.
After you click “Protect VBA Project” it does it its job. So well, that there is no turning back.
Still, if you are willing to give the “bad guys” some kind of chance to deal with you code, you may use “Obfuscation”. It produces code like this:
as you see there are a lot of meaningless comments, the indentation is taken away and some additional lines are added. However, it is really not a nightmare for the bad guy, stealing your code. The recommendation from the developers of the package are that it is a good idea to use obfuscation first, and then use the Unviewable+. The Unviewable+ is part of the Ribbon Commander, coming with plenty of other add ins:
So, if we have to summarize, the Unviewable+ is exactly what you need to protect your job. Nobody (including yourself) can open your code, once it is put through that program (at least I did not find anything possible).
The rest of the important things to know are available in the site of Unviewable+ here: