Charles

The short answer is no. Excel is insecure. You can search google groups on
"Excel Prevent Copy" and read about it, but it will essentially tell you
that you need to write the application in another environment.

--
Dick Kusleika
MVP - Excel
www.dicks-clicks.com
Post all replies to the newsgroup.

"Charles Jordan" wrote in message
om...
We have a project which uses Excel to teach economics. It resembles a
school/University textbook, and has taken many years of VBA
development. Does any one have any ideas as to how we could obstruct
if not prevent the kid on the end of a row of 30, with a legal copy
from simply duplicatimg his CD. He'll do it anyway, but the holy grail
would only enable the fully paid up and registered copy to fire up at
startup.

Possibly by using the Web, and requiring the user to log on and
download something onto one PC only, - and then what...a cookie ? ..He
may have to disable Norton first?
Rewrite some key code as a .exe file in Delphi ? which would be
installed at the outset and which could disable the installation if
asked, or at least render it inoperable ?.

The product is sufficiently unique that we could require a small
amount of discomfort upon purchasing it....but mass copying would be a
bad hit.

IF any NG memeber has any ideas, or experience of this they would be
greatly appreciated. Thanks

Charles Jordan

"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