Prevent distribution of file

[[email protected]]

Hello

I have an excel file which is placed on an NT server where people read
and write to it to complete a company budget. I want to prevent people
from making copies of the file to save to local drive or send the file.
Any suggestions? It does not need to be 100% fullproof but a good level
of prevention would be good. Perhaps this is not specifically an excel
question but NT server side? I am not sure.

thank you.

Daniel

[widemonk]

Can you 'plant' a simple .txt file somewhere on the network, hidden in a quiet little corner.

Then, in your Workbook_Open() function...
If file does not exist then thisworkbook.close

To get around the fact that someone might turn off macros is a little harder, but not impossible.

Have your workbook include a blank worksheet, with all the others 'very hidden'
after the IF statement above, have the code unhide the sheets but you'll also need the same to re-hide the sheets in Workbook_BeforeSave.

If macros off then blank worksheet only
If macros on then
If file exists then unhide sheets
else close workbook

[Amedee Van Gasse]

[email protected] shared this with us in microsoft.public.excel:

> Hello
>
> I have an excel file which is placed on an NT server where people read
> and write to it to complete a company budget. I want to prevent people
> from making copies of the file to save to local drive or send the
> file. Any suggestions? It does not need to be 100% fullproof but a
> good level of prevention would be good. Perhaps this is not
> specifically an excel question but NT server side? I am not sure.
>
> thank you.
>
> Daniel

It is not possible. If people can read a file, they can copy it, print
it, send it. Period.
You cannot solve this with technology. Write (and enforce) a policy for
things like this.

--
Amedee Van Gasse using XanaNews 1.17.3.1
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[widemonk]

Daniel,

To a certain extent, Amedee is correct. For all intents and purposes, you can't stop people copying it, or at least making their own version, you can just severely slow them down... however, you did mention that it didnt need to be 100% foolproof.

[Dave Peterson]

One thing that's not too secure...

Make your workbook require that you use macros--maybe some sort of user defined
function that will break the functionality if macros are disabled and that UDF
can't recalculate. Then have a macro (or a few macros) check the path of the
workbook--if it's not the correct spot, do something that makes the workbook
difficult to use.

But all this depends on macro security and macro security can be broken pretty
easily.

And this doesn't stop the saving or sending--it just tries to stop any copy from
working correctly.

[email protected] wrote:
>
> Hello
>
> I have an excel file which is placed on an NT server where people read
> and write to it to complete a company budget. I want to prevent people
> from making copies of the file to save to local drive or send the file.
> Any suggestions? It does not need to be 100% fullproof but a good level
> of prevention would be good. Perhaps this is not specifically an excel
> question but NT server side? I am not sure.
>
> thank you.
>
> Daniel

--

Dave Peterson