+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 2 of 2

Preventing Excel Product Piracy or Illegal Giveaways

  1. #1
    Registered User
    Join Date
    07-31-2005
    Posts
    4

    Preventing Excel Product Piracy or Illegal Giveaways

    I sell Excel-based software quite successfully. Delivery is as an *.xlt template file. However, my educational customers like to pass it around, for example, if I sell a copy to a student in Sao Paulo, I could get a support question from a student in Buenos Aries a few months later..., it happens everywhere, even the teachers do it, piracy is rampant in edu-media. Can anyone help with suggestions on how I can presonalize and prevent piracy and freebies and being ripped off - by using VBA within the product, or by other means. Walkenbach and other Excel software vendors do it. How can I? See us at SummitPK.com and remember, when driving in the West, "Watch for falling rock!"

  2. #2
    Forum Expert dominicb's Avatar
    Join Date
    01-25-2005
    Location
    Lancashire, England
    MS-Off Ver
    MS Office 2000, 2003, 2007 & 2016 365
    Posts
    4,867

    Smile

    Good afternoon Fallingrock

    Excel is not a secure development platform and has never been advertised as such. Any form of password protection in Excel can be bypassed in one way or another - and if students are passing your templates between themselves they will pass on the password. A knowledgeable user would be able to remove any kind of protection using VBA literally within seconds.

    Incidentally, John Walkenbach does not protect the add-ins he supplies - his view being that attempts at protection can be bypassed and only serve to hamper legitimate customers.

    It seems to me that piracy is rampant on any digital media, be it software (any type), music, films etc and as long as someone is sharp enough to develop a method of protection, someone else will be sharp enough to cripple it.

    HTH

    DominicB

+ Reply to Thread

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts

Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.0 RC 1