Self-Sgned Digital Certificates...What Are They Good For?

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MDW - 07 Jan 2005 18:34 GMT

My PC has Office 2000/Outlook 2003 installed. I do a great deal of VBA
programming using Access and Excel. A good deal of these things aren't
distributed - I have the only copy and it runs on my PC.

I was looking at Microsoft Office Tools and I found the "Digital Certificate
for VBA Projects" utility. To the best I can fathom, this allows me to not
get some macro/VBA alerts if I'm runing code that I wrote on this machine.

However, I've "created" a certificate for myself, but I don't know what to
do with it. I can't see a place where I could associate it with an Excel
macro or a code module in Access. What is the use of those certificates? Is
there a step I'm not doing?

Kthxbye.

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Hmm...they have the Internet on COMPUTERS now!

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Brendan Reynolds - 07 Jan 2005 21:16 GMT

Code signing wasn't added to Access until Access 2003, so if you're using
Access 2000 the feature is not available in that version of Access. I can't
comment on Excel. I know it's had the feature longer than Access, but I'm
not sure in exactly which version it was introduced. If no one else posts
the answer here, I'm sure someone in the Excel newsgroups will know.

Signature

Brendan Reynolds (MVP)
http://brenreyn.blogspot.com

The spammers and script-kiddies have succeeded in making it impossible for
me to use a real e-mail address in public newsgroups. E-mail replies to
this post will be deleted without being read. Any e-mail claiming to be
from brenreyn at indigo dot ie that is not digitally signed by me with a
GlobalSign digital certificate is a forgery and should be deleted without
being read. Follow-up questions should in general be posted to the
newsgroup, but if you have a good reason to send me e-mail, you'll find
a useable e-mail address at the URL above.

> My PC has Office 2000/Outlook 2003 installed. I do a great deal of VBA
> programming using Access and Excel. A good deal of these things aren't
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>
> Kthxbye.

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MDW - 10 Jan 2005 13:31 GMT

> Code signing wasn't added to Access until Access 2003,

D'oh!

> I can't
> comment on Excel. I know it's had the feature longer than Access, but I'm
> not sure in exactly which version it was introduced.

Thanks to Tim's reply I was able to find it in Excel....so...apparently it
exists in 2000.

Danke.

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Tim Ferguson - 08 Jan 2005 11:34 GMT

> However, I've "created" a certificate for myself, but I don't know
> what to do with it. I can't see a place where I could associate it
> with an Excel macro or a code module in Access. What is the use of
> those certificates? Is there a step I'm not doing?

I cannot talk about Office 2003, but you do need to sign your code in Word,
Excel, Powerpoint, Visio, etc from 2000 upwards: but not Access.

If you have your certificate installed, you can sign your VBA code in the
VB editor using Tools -> Digital Signature. If your signing certificate is
not visible in the _bottom_ half, then use the Choose button to find it;
then just click OK.

Getting the certificate installed can be a rigmarole but there is a lot of
help around -- try the MS Knowledge base, or Google on VBA Code Signing.

Hope that helps. You'll probably get more information in one of the
security groups.

Tim F

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MDW - 10 Jan 2005 13:35 GMT

Thanks Tim. I didn't look TOO hard for it in Excel 2k...I found it after
reading your post. Unfortunately, Access was where I had the biggest need for
it. Doesn't that just figure? :(

Anyways, thanks for the help.

> > However, I've "created" a certificate for myself, but I don't know
> > what to do with it. I can't see a place where I could associate it
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>
> Tim F

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