Hello  Scripters! I’m somewhat of a Noob, but have managed to successfully create some very help Applets to make my daily life easier. I’m a Numbers guru (not many of us around) and have created an amazing tool for my business in the form of a Numbers template. This is the proposal tool we use to design and quote solar systems to our clients and has sensitive pricing information I want to keep out of the hands of my competitors. We don’t share the tool with customers, but I’m concerned that an employee who leaves might take it with them. I have figured out a decent way to hide sensitive info within the workbook, but there I could hack it if presented with it, so I’m looking for more. I’m in Silicon Valley and sold a solar system to the head of the Numbers team, who I had a meeting with a couple weeks ago to discuss a feature wish list. I don’t expect  will give us more granular security in Numbers anytime soon.
Nutshell: In Numbers, one can not password protect a template. My fix is, using applescript through a read only applet, open a password protected workbook, duplicate it then close the first one. It’s pretty fast and effectively creates a password protected template. Now I have a wide open workbook that’s vulnerable. Here’s a couple quick ways to do things I don’t want people to be able to do:
- save as template - This will remove the password protection.
- export to .csv - not a working copy, but shares all of the data
- locate and unhide the sensitive data within the workbook
Is there a way to leave the applet running, constantly looking for triggers, then close the workbook if those triggers happen?
Sorry for the book… I’m serious about this and I’m willing to pay for a solution. I’m actually looking into developing an iOS app, but there’s a a lot of complicated formulas that would make coding it very time consuming and expensive.
Thanks in advance for playing Script with me today!
Ash