tpoynton
08-10-2007, 09:05 AM
Greetings,
I'm considering buying a 'VBA developers certificate' to digitally sign VBA code, and was just wondering if anyone uses digital code signing for their VBA projects. I havent considered it before because I pretty much only distribute one add in, as xla, via a website. If installed 'manually', no scary sounding MS warnings appear. Now I've got Johnske's automated installer working just fine, and I like it...except for the security warning. I've been doing some testing of the installer with users, and they dont know how to handle the warning and follow MS's recommendation to disable macros...which isnt a terrible thing in the big picture (in spite of documentation/instructions telling people what to do, and why it's safe). Also, even when people follow the instructions to temporarily lower security from high to medium, some fail to close and reopen excel for the security settings to take effect...and I get an email :)
To answer a questions you may have...Why not go the exe route? a good # of users are mac users, and (when distributed as xla anyway) administrator rights are not typically needed to install, which is good for use in computer labs/classrooms (i've only heard of one mac computer lab that couldnt install 'manually' via xla). Why not have users do (whatever)? well, all my add in does is provide a UI for a lot of data analysis things Excel does anyway...so a good # of users are not really 'excel users'. The add in is also free, so making enough money to justify the cost of the signing isnt going to happen...I make enough from google ads on my site to cover webhosting, but that's about it. However, 'for the greater good', I might bite the bullet and do this.
I thought I'd see what people thought. I've searched the forum and have only seen it mentioned as being ridiculously expensive (300 bucks a year from Thawte). There is an interesting thread (http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4808) on makecert from two years ago which might be good for some of people here...
I've emailed Thawte twice with some other questions I had with no answer, which I might ask if people here do this kind of digital code signing.
I'm considering buying a 'VBA developers certificate' to digitally sign VBA code, and was just wondering if anyone uses digital code signing for their VBA projects. I havent considered it before because I pretty much only distribute one add in, as xla, via a website. If installed 'manually', no scary sounding MS warnings appear. Now I've got Johnske's automated installer working just fine, and I like it...except for the security warning. I've been doing some testing of the installer with users, and they dont know how to handle the warning and follow MS's recommendation to disable macros...which isnt a terrible thing in the big picture (in spite of documentation/instructions telling people what to do, and why it's safe). Also, even when people follow the instructions to temporarily lower security from high to medium, some fail to close and reopen excel for the security settings to take effect...and I get an email :)
To answer a questions you may have...Why not go the exe route? a good # of users are mac users, and (when distributed as xla anyway) administrator rights are not typically needed to install, which is good for use in computer labs/classrooms (i've only heard of one mac computer lab that couldnt install 'manually' via xla). Why not have users do (whatever)? well, all my add in does is provide a UI for a lot of data analysis things Excel does anyway...so a good # of users are not really 'excel users'. The add in is also free, so making enough money to justify the cost of the signing isnt going to happen...I make enough from google ads on my site to cover webhosting, but that's about it. However, 'for the greater good', I might bite the bullet and do this.
I thought I'd see what people thought. I've searched the forum and have only seen it mentioned as being ridiculously expensive (300 bucks a year from Thawte). There is an interesting thread (http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4808) on makecert from two years ago which might be good for some of people here...
I've emailed Thawte twice with some other questions I had with no answer, which I might ask if people here do this kind of digital code signing.