You can hide the windows that allow you to see the workbook in excel.
Open excel
Open the file
window|hide window (in xl2003 menus)
close excel
Answer yes to the "do you want to save your changes" prompt
Next time you open that file, you won't see it. To make changes, you'll have to
show the window, make the changes, hide the window, and save that workbook.
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I'm not sure what you're doing, but you could have a macro in the quoting
template that opens the Materials workbook, runs the macro you want, and closes
the materials workbook.
This goes in the ThisWorkbook module of the quoting workbook:
Option Explicit
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Dim myFileName As String
Dim MacName As String
Dim wkbk As Workbook
myFileName = "C:\my documents\excel\materials.xls"
MacName = "MyMacroNameHere"
Set wkbk = Workbooks.Open(Filename:=myFileName, ReadOnly:=True)
Application.Run "'" & wkbk.Name & "'!" & MacName
wkbk.Close savechanges:=False
End Sub
Untested, but compiled.
And no error checking at all within the macro. You'll want to add some.