How do I selectively share data with clients, so that they only see their own data, and not of their competitors? - vba

Question

I have data like this in my Excel 2013 workbook
Table 1:
Col A Col B Col B
1 Client 1 ..... 123
2 Client 1 ..... 456
3 Client 1 ..... 99
4 Client 2 ..... 324
5 Client 2 ..... 989
6 Client 3 ..... 234
7 Client 3 ..... 23
I am using this Table 1 for a client specific report elsewhere in the excel. e.g.
Client Report: Client 1
Col A Col B Col C Col D
1 Client 1 123 456 99
The cell A1 in the report is a data validation dropdown containing the names of the Clients. I can change that dropdown to Client 2
Client Report: Client 2
Col A Col B Col C Col D
1 Client 2 324 989
What I want to be able to do is send out one file to all clients, which contains the Client Report, but each Client should only be able to see their own data. As a bonus, each client should also not be able to see which other clients are on the list (i.e. in the file that Client 1 receives, he/she should not have access to the numbers of Client 2 and Client 3, and as a bonus, should not even see the names Client 2 and Client 3)
I have an option of creating these files manually, for each client. I am looking for a way to hide data in a file depending on which Client it is for, and thus sending out the same file to multiple clients (I have ~30 clients, so the manual process will be error prone and a pain). I don't want to create 30 separate files or sheets if I can help it. The ideal way would be to build a 'master' option, which gives me access to all data, but not to the client who I send this out to. However, data confidentiality is super critical, and if password protection in Excel Workbooks is questionable, then I would not want this option, and I will go back to manual :)
Also, even though I am only looking for vanilla Excel solutions (I can't rely on my clients to have addons installed or install one just for the sake of this), if you do know of interesting ways to address this kind of a problem with addons, please do comment/answer.
Thanks!

Answer 1

As Steven Martain said, there is NO SECURITY in Excel. You can password-protect your Workbook, but the password can be broken in no time at all. Instead split your file into several separate files. Please see this link for an idea of how to do this.
http://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s3/win006.htm
Then, simply email the different files to different recipients/clients/people. See this link for an idea of how to do that.
http://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s1/outlook/amail6.htm

Answer 2

It is not possible to do it without coding/VB. However, you can use InstaRow ( check here). Which is perfect tool for this problem. You can signup with email id ( and your clients). They will see exactly their portion.
They can even change data easily.

Answer 3

Posting #StevenMartin 's answer from the comments above, as it seems to the way to go about it
"Write a macro to spit out 30 workbooks - a simple search would tell you excel password protection can be broken in seconds"