Visio needs password protection security option like Word.

[Elka]

I need to be able to password protect Visio files such that even when they
are saved with a different name, the password security remains in effect.
These are copyrighted and patented materials which we necessarily share with
clients. The clients, however, do not have the right to alter these
documents without our knowledge and consent.

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...0917b3953&dg=microsoft.public.visio.developer

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Look for the Save as PDF feature in Visio 12 to help with this scenario.
Otherwise Visio relies on 3rd parties to provide document protection
solutions.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Carl Mudryk]

I hate to be negative, but that is a really lame answer. Visio HAD password
protection (as simple as it was) in previous versions, which was removed in
Visio 2003. As a developer of Visio add-ons, we need to distribute templates
that may include intellectual property that we do not want our clients to
have access to. Exporting a file to PDF really defeats the purpose of
building a Visio add-on, you would think?

Take it from a loyal Visio user, Visio needs password protection for either
objects or ShapeSheets. As an aside, I would really like to know about any
3rd party application that provide this functionality, as I have not been
able to find any.

Respectfully,
Carl Mudryk

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

The previous password protection was removed because it was too easy to
circumvent. We did not want users to mistakenly believe that their data was
secure when it really wasn't.

Microsoft has been and will continue to evaluate providing Information
Rights Management capabilities in Visio, but we have not made a commitment
to provide such functionality yet.

Meanwhile Liquid Machines is a Visio partner that offers IRM for Visio
documents:
http://www.liquidmachines.com/products/overview_doc.php

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Carl Mudryk]

Mark,
Thanks for the info. I will followup with the link you provided. While I
appreciate you looking after your customers by removing the password, I
would have much preferred if you had FIXED it if it was broken. Depending on
another third party add-on to build our third party add-on to fix a problem
that should have been fixed in the core program is not my idea of a fun
time.

Sorry to belabour the point, but if Visio is really a development platform,
then such a basic feature should be included with the program. We don't need
full-blown Information Rights Management, we just need a password on the
ShapeSheet.

Thanks for listening,
Carl

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Thanks for the feedback, Carl. I was just discussing this issue today with
several of our developers. We have some ideas as to how this might be
accomplished (protecting the ShapeSheet). One of the key issues that came
up (and has come up in the past) was the degree of protection 3rd party
developers and shape designers are looking for.

For example, do you just need to prevent over-curious users from viewing and
tweaking your content? Visio could support a "flag" or signature on your
shape that tells Visio not to enable the Show ShapeSheet command. This
eliminates most of the situations where your content is unwittingly changed,
but a knowledgeable person would be able to turn off your flag and gain
access. Such a solution is quite simple to implement.

Or perhaps you want to protect the intellectual property you have invested
in your content and thus need to ensure that no one can access your content.
This means that the ShapeSheet information is encrypted and that Visio
blocks all avenues of access to the information. This type of solution is
much more complex. If you prevent anyone from getting at the content and
making changes, you potentially render your content incompatible with
various Visio solutions - both 3rd party and those in the product. If you
want more fine-grained control over who can do what to your content, things
get much more complicated.

I'm very curious where your expectations lie along this continuum of simple
prevention to complete protection. The more we understand developer's
scenarios, the better we can focus on a specific issue to solve and get that
one done.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Carl Mudryk]

Mark,
As you suggest, there are two levels of protection, simply just to prevent
accidental change, and then to protect our intellectual property. We are
specificaly interested in protecting our IP. If it was possible to encrypt
the shapesheet, that would be awsome. Otherwise, just some method of locking
any shape with a flag set would also work. I believe in most cases, it would
be sufficient to have a single flag or signature rather than any more fine
grain control.

One of the features that separates Visio from other solutions is the ability
to treat shapes as object that contain their own programming and behaviors.
That is where we invest a lot of development time, making icons that provide
extensive functionality for our clients. But, all our code is open for the
world to see, and to reverse engineer.

Thanks again,
Carl

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Good feedback. Who knows, maybe there is a way to "compile" a shape from a
source. The challenge is how to expose your shape to both Visio and the
outside world. Lock up the shape too little and someone will reverse
engineer it. Lock up the shape too much and it won't work with Visio
features like the user expects.

We have no plans at the moment but will continue to gather input and try out
ideas.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[visi3d]

I was wondering how you might truely lock a visio document when there i
an API that exposes the document data. Any protection would be moot onc
the document loads unless API access to document's object model wa
prevented as well.

Does Liquid Machines' solution prevent someone from dropping a COM dl
into the Add-Ins directory to circumvent it

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

My understanding of the Liquid Machines' solution is very limited. However,
I believe that they do complete file encryption and not Shapesheet
protection. You must have rights to open (and decrypt) the Visio file.
After that I believe you can do anything you want with the document.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[SaraF]

Mark

Has there been any progress since this chat? Is there yet a way to password
protect a Visio File?

Sara

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Hi Sara,

Thanks for checking back. No, Visio 2007 does not support password
protection. We continue to solicit customer input about document protection
for a future Visio release. To present the question in basic terms, we'd
like to know whether customers want document protection to keep honest users
from accidentally doing something they shouldn't, or do you want to keep
dishonest users from prying into something they shouldn't? The distinction
is important because it speaks to the complexity and robustness of the
solution. We're trying to get feedback from a wide range of customers and
partners on this issue.

To set expectations, it is quite rare for Visio to introduce new
functionality in between major product releases. Thus the 3rd party
document protection solutions are your best option for now.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[jrv116]

Gigatrust can protect a visio file. you can sign up for a free test
account at www.gigatrust.com

 

[esalerno]

Hi Sara,
Liquid Machines protects information in such a way that the contents of
the file are protected, even if someone tries to copy and paste the
information from one application to another. You can learn more about
how Liquid Machines protects Visio documents here:
http://www.liquidmachines.com/content937.html
and learn about our products with a Flash file here:
http://www.liquidmachines.com/content692.html
-Eric