First, be advised that I'm no computer expert. Just a guy trying to be
recognized as the office guru on Excel. I don't have to widely distribute a
product to make a living. So I just manually install the file myself. I
misspoke when I said that you can't open the file as Steve pointed out. You
can open it with macros disabled of course. See our comments if you havn't
already.

Maybe Excel could do this the first
time it is run, i the text file is supplied and somehow disquised from
its true purpose.

You can install a text file using Excel and add text in case the above
implies that you thought you couldn't. Text is optional actually. A file with
the given name need only exist at a certain location.

The idea (if that's what you meant) of the template modifying itself on
first use after installing the cookie will work for my situation since I can
walk away with the floppy afterwards. I only need worry about staff copying
the file off the system after it has already been used. Granted, this will
only save me the step of manually installing the file. Obviously, if you are
distributing the template then they will just save the original floppy/CD
which can be reused.

Just throwing out this idea which is probably dumb: If your programs are
highly specialized involving only a small number of sales then it may be
feasible to always distribute a demo version first. The demo version is
really a ruse which also installs the cookie. The client then must purchase
the full version from you to obtain full functionality and don't know that
they have the cookie installed. So all legitimate clients first run the demo
version and then the real version. If someone makes a copy of the full
version or walks off with the floppy then it won't work. I don't believe
anyone has a good answer for this situation.

Regards,
Greg






"fallingrock" wrote:


Greg,

Your idea sounds secure enough. It doesn't involve a registry change or
a scan of the user id. Simply write a file to their hard drive (somewhat
like a cookie), then open and read a key phrase from that file before
allowing the Excel template to launch a new instance. I can code that.
But, that will take an installer app to write the txt file to disk
(somewhere on C: drive, I presume) right? Got a reference or
recommendation for an installer? Maybe Excel could do this the first
time it is run, i the text file is supplied and somehow disquised from
its true purpose.

Thanks all for the response to this "can't be done" thread.


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fallingrock
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