Digital Certificate

[John Eddy]

I just finished a document for my department that took me
five weeks to create and now it looks like we won't even
be able to use it becuase of all this business with
Digital certificates. I understand the need for them but
why can't people accept me as trusted with the selfcert
tool? Were not a programming company and we don't do this
often were not going to pay for a certificate from a
certifying authority because were just using it
internally. It seems stupid to me that there doesn't
appear to be anyway that other people in my department can
use my document other than turning security to medium and
then enabling macros every single time they use the
document. Is there anyway we can do this so that the
impact of using it is only a one time thing and after that
they can simply use the document without changing settings
each time...and keep security at High? Or at least
Medium? ...without paying for a certificate?

Thanks,
John

 

[Graham Mayor]

If the document is saved as a template, Word can be (and usually is) set to
trust installed templates and add-ins without impairing overall security.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Just to clarify (in view of the parallel thread in vba.beginners on this)
'stored as a template' in this case means stored in one of the templates
folders (user templates, workgroup templates or the Word application one) or
a subfolder. It can be saved there as a .doc or a .dot, and any code in
thisdocument or macro modules will run.

Conversely, saving as a template (.dot) elsewhere doesn't give the template
trusted status, and High Security will prevent the code from working (and
open the document in design mode).

 

[Brad]

This seems to work only if the file is in the user's
specific Templates folder. If I save my template in All
Users/Templates, it isn't trusted. Program
Files/Office/Templates doesn't seem to work, either. Is
there a location I can save the template so all users
will trust it?

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Brad

Have you got your workgroup templates folder location (Tools > Options >
File locations) set to point to All Users/Templates?

The other place which should work is Word's own template folder which will
be something like:

Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033

- you'll see Word's own wizards and so on there.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Brad

You're right - funny, I thought I'd checked, but I must have been dreaming
;-)

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi John,

Which leaves me back at needing
a certificate which apparently isn't going to happen.

Note: I'm not certain about this, I'm just grasping at
something I vaguely recall reading recently, but...

It seems to me I saw something about some kind of Microsoft
Server that can generate a certificate for internal use.
Mind you, I don't know if this would only be for .NET
things, or whether it could be used to sign Office
documents. But it might be worth looking into.
Unfortunately, I can't tell you where the best place would
be to look! Maybe a Windows (security) group?

Note: theoretically, macro security could be set to "low",
if everyone has adequate, up-to-date anti-virus software
installed that would take care of the checking for you. The
macro security in word is really supposed to be only a
stop-gap type of measure.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Jan 24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail