Password Protection on Excel Reports

[mrees]

Hello all,

We are using CR & CE 9.0.

We have some reports that are created as Excel files and emailed to the client when an event file is created. Is there anyway that we can also password protect these Excel books, as currently we have to manually add this and send if the client requests it?

Thanks in advance.

mrees

 

[IdoMillet]

Would a password-protected PDF (instead of Excel) file be a good enough solution for you?

What are you doing manually to the excel file? ZIP with password or Protect, Sheet... ?

Cheers,
- Ido

CUT, Visual CUT, and DataLink Viewer:
view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[mrees]

Thanks for the response Ido.

Clients would like a "regular" .xls file, that requires a password to open it.

It may help if I describe our reporting methods. Our business provides 3rd party financial administration to 30+ clients. Internally we use CR+CE to provide various reports. We are begining to provide this externally, but the majority of clients receive Excel reports. This is ok but a very manual task. We can easily provide basic Excel reports, via Crystal and email them with Crystal also. But with increased concern about information security, they are begining to ask for them password protected, which I am wondering whether we can do in Crystal also?

This won't be as big a problem once we provide CE to all clients,but we have no definte date as to when this will be acheived. Any other thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

mrees

 

[IdoMillet]

What are you doing manually (now) to the excel file? ZIP with password or Protect, Sheet... ?

Would either approach work for you?

Cheers,
- Ido

CUT, Visual CUT, and DataLink Viewer:
view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[mrees]

The whole book is protected so when saving we would choose from within the "Save As" dialogue (Excel 2000): Tools->General Options, and enter a password to be used for opening. The Excel file is then just emailed as a .xls.

The client does not want anyone to be able to open the workbook who does not have the password. (Or the inclination to find the most basic password cracker on the web!)

Thanks
mrees

 

[UHsoccer]

Please be aware that there are a number of VB scripts that can find the password of an Excel spreadsheet.
It is NOT secure

 

[mrees]

UHSoccer,

Thanks for that, I realise this hence my

Or the inclination to find the most basic password cracker on the web!

We do also send some reports via FTP, but not all clients want to incur the extra cost for this. Password protection of their files is their idea of security.

mrees

 

[IdoMillet]

This is not an option in Crystal. However, applying a Workbook password after Crystal exports the Excel file is quite doable by creating your own application (e.g., Visual Basic) to apply the password protection.

Alternatively, contact a 3rd-party Crystal utility developer (see list at:

http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html)

and request this functionality be added to an existing Crystal Report Manager utility.

This would allow you to combine the scheduling, exporting, protecting, and e-mailing into a single step.

Cheers,
- Ido

CUT, Visual CUT, and DataLink Viewer:
view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com