Prevent copying data from sheet

Patrickvs

How can I prevent to copy data from a sheet to another file? I need share some sheet with editor privilege, but I have to prevent he to copy the data to another place. Thanks, since now.

Brad Jones

Completely impossible.

If you give them editor rights, they can see everything and even make changes to it.  The simple fact is that if they can access the sheet from within Smartsheets - they can copy the data.

The only way to prevent users from copying data is not to give them any access to the sheet.  Even viewers can copy.

You can make it harder by only sending them .pdf exports of the sheet regularly, but the still must not have access to the sheet if you want to prevent copying.

You 'might' be able to remove their access to the sheet and then send them Update Requests for the things they need to change - but if they need to make changes regularly then that is not really an option worth entertaining.

L_123

If they can see the data they can copy it down. even if smartsheet didn't give them the ability to copy paste they could write it down by hand or use dual monitors to type it up. There really isn't any functional way smartsheet can prevent this.

Patrickvs

Thanks, I'm new on this platform, I figured it could have a function like excel, which blocks the spreadsheet leaving only a few cells available.