One such software is open source LibreOffice package. There are several software products which allow you to see the VBA source code of the unviewable VBA project. But you need to understand that such restrictions exist only in the Microsoft VBA editor. After such changes, the Excel VBA Project shows the “Project unviewable” message and blocks access to the VBA source code.

There is a way to make VBA Project unviewable by altering several bytes of the Excel workbook or Excel Add-In file in a HEX-editor (or programmatically). This method has low protection efficiency. Recovering the VBA code access in this case is automated and its cost may be considered as equal to zero (X = 0). Anybody can find ways on how to remove VBA Project protection on the Internet.Īlso, many cheap commercial tools are available on the market to remove the VBA password. You may consider VBA password as protection from accidental changes to the VBA code by the customer. X W (or X/W > 1) – Cost of recovering the source code is higher than developing the VBA code. If W is defined as the work hours it took to create the VBA code and X as the amount of work hours to crack this protection to get access to the protected VBA code or restore the VBA code algorithms, then the relation between these quantities gives us the quality of VBA protection: It should become economically disadvantageous to recover VBA code in this case, because it is cheaper to create this VBA code from scratch than to recover it from the protected code. An effective and reliable way to protect VBA code should have the cost of recovering VBA source code from protected code significantly higher than the cost of creating the same VBA code from scratch.

The best measurement would be economical-how many resources were used to produce VBA code and what is the cost of the restoration of this code or algorithms from the secured code.

To compare different VBA code protection methods, we need to have a measurement which directly shows the effectiveness of each method. Thus, it makes sense to treat the term ‘ VBA code protection’ as protection from accessing the VBA source code and protection from VBA code algorithm restoration.

In order to properly discuss the best way to protect VBA code, the “VBA code protection” term needs to be defined first, as well as the criteria of its efficiency.Īll software authors want to avoid a source code leak, especially if they want to monetize their work.

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