Viewing secure Excel workbooks with Confidencial

ℹ️ You’ve received an Excel workbook that’s been secured with Confidencial…now what? This tutorial walks you through what to do. We’re going to pretend you are Bob, you’ve never used Confidencial before, and your coworker, Alice, has sent you a Confidencial Excel workbook. 💡 For the steps Alice took to send this workbook, see Sending secure Excel workbooks with Confidencial.

1. Open the workbook that you received from Alice in Excel

   ℹ️ Since Confidencial’s in-doc encryption keeps documents in their original file format, you can open them in their native application (Microsoft Excel in this example).

   
2. Notice in the above example that you can already see some of the content. This is because Alice added a message for everyone to see after she protected the rest of the workbook. You can also see that there is other content that only you ([e-mail]) and Alice ([e-mail]) are authorized to see. To see this protected content, install the Confidencial add-in for Microsoft Excel by clicking My add-ins under the Insert toolbar and then searching for “Confidencial” in the add-in store.

   
3. With the add-in installed, you can now click Confidencial on the right side of the Home toolbar

   
4. You are now asked to log in. When Alice sent this workbook to you, she also invited you to Confidencial. Accept this invite to create a login for Confidencial. Go to your inbox and click the link in the invitation email. From there, you will create a password and generate your encryption keys.

   
5. Now that you have a Confidencial account, you can log in by clicking Individual Log In

   ⚠️ If you are a member of a Confidencial organization, you will log in using the Organization Log In button

   
6. Once you are logged in, click View Encrypted Content in the Confidencial task pane

   

✅ You can now see the content that Alice protected for you.