How to Licence and Protect my spreadsheet based applications??????

[Mark McInerney]

Hi All,

I create spreadsheet based applications and all my customers are given access to them. As soon as they cease being a client I want them to cease being in a position to use my applications. They pay for other services and I offer them free use of the applications as part of the deal.

I have been using the DoneEx compiler to help me create Registration Keys which are hardware locked and create a licence period for me. This is great but the spreadsheet becomes an .EXE file - some of my clients are not very PC literate and working with .EXE files makes things harder to transfer files between computers.

Does anybody know of another option that I can use to 'protect' my spreadsheets from unauthorised use? Is there something that can create Registration keys but not alter the file - i.e. keep it as a .xls(m) file?

Appreciate any thoughts.

Mark.

 

[Jaye7]

Excel is not secure no matter what you do, you can protect your vba properties and I can crack it with a free application in around 30 seconds, you can password protect it and I can use free software to tell me the password within around 10 seconds.

Sorry, I don't have any advice on what you can actually use other than your own program, but definitely no security in excel for anyone who is prepared to google a hack, the security is only good for your normal everyday user who doesn't use scripting or is too lazy to be bothered trying to crack it.