title: Earmarking Excel file via VBA
body: <p>Is there a way to 'earmark' a file in vba? My code steps into a series of folders and imports data from every file (excel) present into a master database. The most time consuming part of the operation is opening files- currently, I add a prefix to the filename after import. The code looks for this prefix, and skips the file in the next import cycle.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a more elegant and less frontend-visible way of marking files, so that VBA can recognize a completed file without opening it first?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: To clarify, the filenames are read, and the file is not processed if it has the prefix (I_). I'm looking for a way to mark the file without changing it's respective location or filename- a property not immediately apparent to other users of the database. This marking needs to persist after the code is finished, as the same files are checked again later, and possibly from multiple machines running the update code. </p>
  
  <p>I can't keep a database of processed files- there are several thousand and growing. Comparing to that list would take longer than opening the file and processing it regardless of whether it has been run before.</p>
  
  <p>An array of processed files wouldn't persist. I don't have issue of processing the same file multiple times in one execution, but rather, of [processing the file each time the code is executed instead of once-and-done] or [rename the file]. The latter isn't a good solution- I don't want to rename thousands of files used for reference by other people and programs.</p>