Can someone explain this to me, so that I can better understand what is
happening:-

We are a print company and we want to give our customer an estimating
workbook, that is made up of lots of different calculations, based on about
20 different types of variable. The value of these 20 variables change from
customer to customer, and they will be for things like price of a printing
plate, or price to run the printing press etc etc. The estimating workbook
would therefore, for example, be able to specify how many printing plates are
needed, and given the price for the printing plates for that particular
customer, thereby calculate a total printing plate price which will be part
of the overall price.

In order to maintain the confidentiallity of these 20 individual variables,
the workbook gives only the final price per printed output - ie the overall
price. Also in order to maintain confidentiallity, I have written the
estimating workbook separate from the variables worksheet - the estimating
workbook uses links to the variables worksheet to calculate the final price.

We send the customer just the estimating workbook, and not the variables
worksheet (as we obviously dont want them to see the individual variables).
Yet the estimating workbook still works for them, even though they cannot
open the link to the variables worksheet - which is what I dont understand.
Are the variables in fact somehow encoded intot the estimating workbook, and
therefore not as hidden as we first thought?

When I have tried sending just the estimating workbook to another PC that
does not have access to the variables worksheet, the estimating workbook
works fine, and I cannot "find" the data from the variables worksheet (other
than that I know it is part of the calculation within the estimating
workbook), which makes me think it is still kept hidden.

Does this make sense?!

Will