Microsoft® Office Excel® 2003 Step by Step

Authenticate Workbooks

The unfortunate reality of exchanging files over networks, especially over the Internet, is that you need to be sure you know where the files you’re working with came from. One way an organization can guard against files with viruses or substitute data is to authenticate every workbook using a digital signature. A digital signature is a value, created by combining a user’s unique secret digital signature file mathematically with the contents of the workbook, that programs such as Excel can recognize and use to verify the identity of the user who signed the file. A good analog for a digital signature is a wax seal, which was ...