You are a financial modeller and have developed a bespoke economic modelling framework for evaluating upstream oil and gas assets for a particular client. You would like to protect your intellectual property, in case someone else tries to copy your work and sell it as their own.
You are aware that Excel offers document properties e.g. details such a descriptive title, the author name, the subject and keywords that help identify the file and that a workbook can be marked as final to discourage editing.
You are aware that Excel offers document properties e.g. details such a descriptive title, the author name, the subject and keywords that help identify the file and that a workbook can be marked as final to discourage editing.
But despite the fact that sheet protection has been enhanced in Excel 2013, you know that sheet passwords offer little more than protection against accidental damage or uninformed tinkering, as passwords can be removed by hacking software.
Hiding data is not a viable option either. Hidden data can easily be unhidden manually or by using an add-in. Sometimes though, costly mistakes can happen. The formatting fubar that left Barclays Capital with contracts involving collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers than it never meant to acquire still reverberates through the City. Apparently, a junior law associate hid rows rather than deleting them, so the assets were included in the offer to purchase !
You turn to Bill, an Excel MVP who runs an Excel consultancy, for expert advice: Bill, how can I stamp a workbook in order to prove that I have authored it ?
Bill: I am glad to hear that you are proactive. Most of my friends or clients approach me for help after they discover that a third party has copied their work.
In litigation projects, digital forensic investigators try to establish multiple linkages in order to trace authorship. I always encourage modellers to put as much custom information into the workbook, as it stamps down that they developed it.
Most of it can be removed or be heavily modified by any experienced Excel developer, though. Here is a trick that is so deeply hidden, unless the plagiarist knows where to look for your stamp, it is likely to still be there when you need it the most: for legal action !
The plan is to store an image of your logo and a copyright text inside an OpenXML Office file
Hiding data is not a viable option either. Hidden data can easily be unhidden manually or by using an add-in. Sometimes though, costly mistakes can happen. The formatting fubar that left Barclays Capital with contracts involving collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers than it never meant to acquire still reverberates through the City. Apparently, a junior law associate hid rows rather than deleting them, so the assets were included in the offer to purchase !
You turn to Bill, an Excel MVP who runs an Excel consultancy, for expert advice: Bill, how can I stamp a workbook in order to prove that I have authored it ?
Bill: I am glad to hear that you are proactive. Most of my friends or clients approach me for help after they discover that a third party has copied their work.
In litigation projects, digital forensic investigators try to establish multiple linkages in order to trace authorship. I always encourage modellers to put as much custom information into the workbook, as it stamps down that they developed it.
Most of it can be removed or be heavily modified by any experienced Excel developer, though. Here is a trick that is so deeply hidden, unless the plagiarist knows where to look for your stamp, it is likely to still be there when you need it the most: for legal action !
The plan is to store an image of your logo and a copyright text inside an OpenXML Office file
- First, download and install the Office Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office tool.
- Insert an Office 2010 Custom UI part
- Insert your logo image as an icon into the OpenXML file Zip container.
- Enter your copyright text in the editor window within XML comment tags <!-- and -->
- Save all changes to your workbook
Deeply hidden stamp: Image & text comment inserted inside an OpenXML workbook using the CustomUI Editor
George: Bill this is an awesome, novel approach ! It must be extremely difficult to find my authorship information in a populated workbook without specific tools designed to look for it. Can I stamp multiple files at once using this approach ?
Bill: Yes, there is a free Addin available based on the Ribbon Commander Framework.
Bill: Yes, there is a free Addin available based on the Ribbon Commander Framework.
This case study is presented in an effort to provide Excel practitioners with a way to apply conceptual material to real-world business problems across several sectors. We hope that you find the content engaging, dynamic and helpful in dealing with complex, realistic development problems in Microsoft Excel. While every effort has been made to provide an expert commentary from both academic and practitioner perspectives, the solution(s) presented may not be exhaustive. Please feel free to contribute your suggestion(s) - All names and scenarios are fictional.
