Missing password in DSN file

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a DSN file that i've been using successfully for some time to
connect to my data source. It's in the format of:

[ODBC]
DRIVER=SQL Server
SERVER=<my server name>
DATABASE=<my database name>

[Microsoft Office]
UID=<my user name>
PWD=<my password>

The problem i'm now getting is that when I connect to a query i've
created (or create a new one) using this DSN i'm being prompted for my
password. It's populating the username with the on in the file, so I
guess it must be reading hte file correctly. The only thing I can think
of is that i've recently upgraded to Excel 2003 from Excel 97, but I
can't find any info on why it no longer regognises the password when
googeling.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

<M>

 

[Guest]

Ok,

My misunderstanding. It seems that in 2000 MS became aware of a
loophole in the security for documents containing data acquired through
a DSN as the document was saving the connection details (including
password) in the file in plain text. When the SR-1/SR-1a was released
they disabled this feature.

To their credit they did allow the user to manually override this new
setting and continue to save the un-encrypted connection details with
the file, but then why would you want to?

It was this fix that was causing me problems as I wasn't expecting it.
Now that I know what's going on I can find a new way to share my data.

If you are reading this and want to override the fix then simply right
click your data in the document and select properties. I think the
second option is to save password in file which when checked will do
just that. There is also a registry key that will set this flag by
default if you realy need to.

<M>