You need to be a little clearer with your question. Have you developed an Excel application that you want to re-sell? If so, take a look at http://softwareceo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3401. If not, then you need to let us know what you DO want to do. The best way to do anything may not be the easiest way.

I'm particularly not sure how the second question relates to the first.

Third party products for "packaging" your add-on so it looks like a "real program"?

Third party sites that sell VBA/Excel applications?

Or?

If you mean the first, I don't personally know of any, but perhaps Google does. A very good source would be Microsoft's "partner" Web site.

Have you found other commercial products that are similar to yours? If so, you could either hunt around in their packaging, or write to them and ask what they use.

If not, perhaps the tools do not exist. VBA is inherently kind of a source-code-centric sort of technology.

I got some promising hits on Google searching on .

I don't think MS IRM does what you want but I am not a big expert.

You could post a clearer question in the R&D forum: "Does anyone know of a product that would help me package and protect the intellectual property of an Excel add-on application written in VBA?"

You have to wrap it inside a VB or other language app and Visual Studio with Office Tools offers those types of programming options. If it is just a spreadsheet then there is no way to wrap it and manage licenses for it.

Here is how another person is selling their Excel spreadsheet, but, again, there is no way to manage the license. You could make each one have a different password that they have to get from you to open it but they could still their copy and password to someone else.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ebay-Auction-Profit-Tracking-Excel-Spreadsheet-1-EASY_W0QQitemZ140162249716QQihZ004QQcategoryZ20924QQcmdZViewItem

Lisa

Seems to me that a more secure way to do this would be to create an app using a "regular" dev tool and incorporate the spreadsheet as an object into that app.

Every decent dev tool has a way to manipulate Excel cells' content and format, so this isn't a tall order.

Doing this now, before you have 10,000 users (and 90000 unpaid users you dont know about), is going to cost a lot less and be a lot less painful than it will be in the future when the pain point gets so big that you are forced to do it.

Mark

Check out Dominic's company's Web site at www.agilis-sw.com for more information on their products.

You could also combine Dominic's advice with Mark's: convert your VBA macros into a "real program" (my apologies) and then protect it with one of the Agilis products.

This looks promising - you might want to check it out...
http://www.doneex.com/?p=0&m=0

Marlon

My business used to use a printing company that had a sign on the wall: fast service, high quality, cheap ... pick any two.

I think this is the same thing: Protected, comprehensive, cheap ... pick any two.

Charles was saying that you had to pick which two YOU would settle for in the creation of your spreadsheet for distribution. Not your customers.

I'm sure you've already contacted the developers of the Excel tool that was already shared to discuss what is missing that you need, in their product. Did they think that they could expand on the portion that was missing in their product, for you? Were they open to collaboration?

I love how easy it is to work with other developers on needs when you bring something to the table that will add value to their overall product. We work with another company and that developer was missing something that he added in one week.

Also, sometimes you have to spend money to make money. When we started out we used the small business investment services of Mastercard and Visa. If you protect your worksheet, you should be confident of how much people will pay for it and should be able to project out the pay back on the expenditure to get it licensed with a license management tool. This is the basic joy of the software business. You have to buy the tools that do what you need and make your product good enough that it will pay off the debt that you create when you start out.

Lisa

Hi, you should try XLSafe PRO... Works great for me :)

The company that has this sofware is called Datasafexl.

http://www.datasafexl.com