macro security & digital certificate

[vvaidya]

I have reviewed the messages on this newsgroups regarding the "High
Security" setting for Macros and in order to prevent the macros from
being disabled it is necessary to obtain a digital certificate.

I have the following situations & I was not exactly sure how digital
certificates would be handled in the situation described below:
1) I have a Excel spreadsheet with many Macros built into it.
2) Since the default security setting in EXCEL is most often "High",
the macros are disabled.
3) In order to circumvent this, I plan to buy a digital certificate (Is
this the correct approach for the problem?)
4) Users using the Excel file do enter data into it & save it with the
new data. The workbook & all worksheets are protected so that they
cannot change any macros, just enter data where permitted

My question is, if the users save the file, then does the "Digital
Certificate" identify that the file has changed, & next time the users
open it, will it automatically disable the macros due to the High
Security setting.

In other words will buying the Digital Certificate serve my purpose or
will saving the filll after new data entry will somehow identify the
file as changed & cause the same problem that I was trying to solve by
getting a digital certificate.

Would appreciate your help.

TIA

Vinay

 

[Mark H. Shin]

The digital certificate is only used to sign your VBA code...

Users can still make modifications to the worksheets and save any changes.
The first time your signed VBA Excel workbook is run you need to lower (to
Medium) Macro Security settings to allow for installation of your
certificate on the user's machine.

When set to Medium, the user has the option to "Enable Macros" and also to
"Trust all macros from this publisher" checkbox so that the user will not be
prompted each time to enable macros.

After this step, the user can set the security settings back to "High".

 

[vvaidya]

Thanks for your help
Vinay