Encrypted CSV

[Richard Relpht]

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 (dissuasive) 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 available 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 ?

When I say Encrypted CSV, I mean something like this.
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

So the CSV structure stays in place but the data itself is garbled.

My database can produce Excel files but not encrypted Excel files. Maybe
that will be in the next version.

Thanks for any help,

Richard

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Most of your question has already been answered in the mailmerge topic.

If you are really keen to do this, there is something to be said for writing
your own Word Text Converter, as long as you have the resource to write code
in a programming environment capable of creating an old-fashioned Win32 DLL
(e.g. MS C/C++ or Delphi).

My database can produce Excel files but not encrypted Excel files. Maybe
that will be in the next version.

FWIW, Word can't use any form of encrypted Excel file as a data source for a
merge, unless you are using DDE to connect and can provide the necessary
passwords when Excel tries to open the file. The parameters for "document
password" etc, in Word's OpenDataSource method call only work with data
sources in Word document format, not even with other Office document formats
such as .xls. AFAICR the Excel (Jet) ODBC driver and OLE DB provider do not
know how to open files encrypted by Excel.

We do quite a bit of mailmerging here with CSV files that are concocted by
a
database system.

Which database system? Could you avoid the problem of having unencrypted
data "lying around outside" by connecting directly via ODBC or OLE DB?

Peter Jamieson