Produce Protected Office File

Produce Protected Office File is the button that turns your analyzed project into a shippable, protected document. It compiles the selected procedures into the satellite DLLs, generates the delegating VBA wrappers and the bridge, injects them into a copy of your Office file, and verifies the result. Its sibling Test Run (Ctrl+F5) does all of that and then opens the protected copy in Office, the fastest way to check your work.

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The progress dialog (“Producing protected file”) walks through five phases:

#	Phase	What you see	What happens
1	Validate	“Preparing project…”	Checks the source file exists, the output is writable and distinct from the source, and the Security Code is valid.
2	Import	“Preparing project…”	Refreshes the module set and the conversion plan.
3	Build DLL	“Compiling <Module> (n / N)…”	Compiles each module that moves to the DLL; builds the satellite DLLs.
4	Inject	“Injecting bridge - saving the Office file, this can take a few minutes…”	Writes wrappers and the VBAPLBridge module into a copy of your document.
5	Verify	“Verifying protected file…”	Re-opens the produced file and checks the injected project.

On success you get a “Protected File Created” confirmation with an Open in Excel/Word/PowerPoint/Access button. The protected copy is saved next to your source as <name>_protected<ext>, with its DLLs in the bin\ subdirectory.

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• Your source file is never modified. Injection targets a copy; the original stays untouched no matter what happens.
• Timestamped, checksum-verified backup. Before injection, the document is backed up and verified (SHA-256), with automatic rollback on failure.
• Honest cancellation. The Cancel button works up to the last safe point. Cancelling during injection closes the background Office process and deletes the incomplete output; cancelling during verification leaves the file on disk but tells you it was not verified.
• “Nothing will be protected” guard. If no procedure is selected to move into the DLL, Produce warns you that the output would be a plain, unprotected copy before doing anything.

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Test Run, in the Build Project group, is Produce plus one step: when the protected file is ready, it opens immediately in the matching Office application. Use it as your inner development loop: edit, Ctrl+F5, check, repeat.

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Failures are reported per phase (Produce failed at <phase>: <message>), so you always know where to look:

• Validate failures are configuration issues: missing source file, output equals source, file locked, or an invalid Security Code.
• Build DLL failures point to a module that doesn’t compile: open the Protection Review and check the Fail verdicts.
• Inject/Verify failures leave your source untouched; check that Office is installed and the file isn’t open elsewhere, then retry.

See Troubleshooting for the full list of messages and fixes.

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