"Dick Kusleika" wrote in message ...
We are
not in the first instance considering full scale commercial piracy,
for various reasons, but some method such as here described might stop
casual copying ? ..


That sounds like Microsoft's excuse for Product Activation.

There are definitely things you can do with a dll and the registry to
prevent the casual copying. (Warning - I'm not an expert on dlls). You can
put a function in a dll that your VBA calls and that function can read the
registry and report back. The VBA can then disable important parts of your
program if the function comes back negative.

If you want to know the how-to, then I'm not your guy. Search for dll in
the public groups and you should find some information.

Here's where you have to be careful. Over time people in your organization
are going to start thinking that the app is protected even though it's
really only set up to thwart casual copying. Overreliance on the protection
scheme can be a problem. Beats the hell out of recoding a million lines,
though.

Dick - I thought you might confirm this - thanks vm. We are just off
on holiday, but will be back on the case after October 8th. I will try
and report back with any progress thereafter, if any , for NG members.
Regards Charles