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#1
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Encrypted CSV files
Hiya ...
We do quite a bit of mailmerging here with CSV files that are concocted by a database system. These are ornery CSV files and Winword (2003) mailmerges them OK. Now I would lke to add some security to these files as some of them contain personal data, so I though it would be OK to encrypt the files so as not to have this stuff on disks and USB keys and generally floating around. Is there any way Winword can decrypt and mailmerge from encrypted data? Is there any third part stuff out there that could help ? Thanks for any help, Richard |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Encrypted CSV files
CSV files are simply plain text comma delimited files. Plain text has no
facility to contain formatting let alone password protection and Word has no ability to decipher encrypted data. You might have more success converting to Excel or a Word table and password protecting the document. -- Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org Richard Relpht wrote: Hiya ... We do quite a bit of mailmerging here with CSV files that are concocted by a database system. These are ornery CSV files and Winword (2003) mailmerges them OK. Now I would lke to add some security to these files as some of them contain personal data, so I though it would be OK to encrypt the files so as not to have this stuff on disks and USB keys and generally floating around. Is there any way Winword can decrypt and mailmerge from encrypted data? Is there any third part stuff out there that could help ? Thanks for any help, Richard |
#3
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Encrypted CSV files
Yes, I do actually know what csv files are.
But I imagined that it would be possible in a CSV file to preserve the CSV structure and simply garble the field contents. But that would require that Word have some way to ungarble if the user provided the correct key. ... Which was why I was asking the question. Example of the straight CSV data: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City Lily;1 Gas Street;;70411;Gasville Billy;2 Main St;Joborough;Soupsville which, when, garbled would look like this: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC or even this: DSDQAML;MLQNBGT;YBGTRFE;YHYHBM5;25FDCSM GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC has no-one ever come up with a trick like that ? Richard |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Encrypted CSV files
Hi Richard,
You could store the csv data in a password-protected zip file or, alternatively, import the data into a password-protected Word file. I'm not sure but, if you use the latter and make it your data source, the mailmerge process should prompt you for the password before executing the merge. Cheers -- macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] ------------------------- "Richard Relpht" wrote in message ... Yes, I do actually know what csv files are. But I imagined that it would be possible in a CSV file to preserve the CSV structure and simply garble the field contents. But that would require that Word have some way to ungarble if the user provided the correct key. ... Which was why I was asking the question. Example of the straight CSV data: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City Lily;1 Gas Street;;70411;Gasville Billy;2 Main St;Joborough;Soupsville which, when, garbled would look like this: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC or even this: DSDQAML;MLQNBGT;YBGTRFE;YHYHBM5;25FDCSM GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC has no-one ever come up with a trick like that ? Richard |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Encrypted CSV files
1. macropod's .doc solution should work. If necessary, the .doc's password
can also be passed as a parameter in a Word VBA OpenDataSource call, although the password would then be embedded in the relevant Word Mail Merge Main Document and might be fairly easy to discover. 2. Otherwise, the only way I know to do this would be to write a text converter that could read an encrypted file and convert it into a delimited file in RTF format. Non-trivial (you have to get the converter SDK anf code this sort of stuff in something that can produce a traditional WIn32 .dll, e.g. C, C++, Delphi), you have to do special stuff to avoid further security questions by Microsoft software, and you have to distribute the converter to all your users. And you have to do the other bit, i.e. write something to encode your csv s. If you're trying to guard against deliberate hijacking of data, you then have to be sure that your encryption algorithm is not easily cracked and that any keys etc. are well guarded. And so on... -- Peter Jamieson http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk "Richard Relpht" wrote in message ... Yes, I do actually know what csv files are. But I imagined that it would be possible in a CSV file to preserve the CSV structure and simply garble the field contents. But that would require that Word have some way to ungarble if the user provided the correct key. ... Which was why I was asking the question. Example of the straight CSV data: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City Lily;1 Gas Street;;70411;Gasville Billy;2 Main St;Joborough;Soupsville which, when, garbled would look like this: Name;Ad1;Ad2;ZIP;City GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC or even this: DSDQAML;MLQNBGT;YBGTRFE;YHYHBM5;25FDCSM GVDVCG;BVKJUY;GTFRFD45;MLOIN;GTFCDXS HBVBOLK;TREDSEZ;GTFRDES;BVHGFVC has no-one ever come up with a trick like that ? Richard |
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