Granting Read Permission to Application Instead of User

Hi,

At the place where I work, my boss wants me to make an Excel file available
to users so that it can be opened through this really small application that
basically just displays the contents of the file and allows you to search
through it. The catch is, he is very adamant that he does not want the users
to be able to copy the file.

Now, since I know that as soon as a user can read a file, he can also copy
it, I was wondering if it is at all possible to grant the read permission to
the application, and bypass the user altogether. The application has no Save
menu available.

Thanks for your thoughts

"Tom Bombadil" <> wrote in message
news:0D6D860C-3461-4562-8EA5-...
> Hi,
>
> At the place where I work, my boss wants me to make an Excel file
> available to users so that it can be opened through this really small
> application that basically just displays the contents of the file and
> allows you to search through it. The catch is, he is very adamant that
> he does not want the users to be able to copy the file.
>
> Now, since I know that as soon as a user can read a file, he can also
> copy it, I was wondering if it is at all possible to grant the read
> permission to the application, and bypass the user altogether. The
> application has no Save menu available.

Would ctrl+a, ctrl+c, and ctrl+v still work?

"FromTheRafters" <erratic @nomail.afraid.org> wrote in message
news:...
> "Tom Bombadil" <> wrote in message
> news:0D6D860C-3461-4562-8EA5-...
>> Hi,
>>
>> At the place where I work, my boss wants me to make an Excel file
>> available to users so that it can be opened through this really small
>> application that basically just displays the contents of the file and
>> allows you to search through it. The catch is, he is very adamant
>> that he does not want the users to be able to copy the file.
>>
>> Now, since I know that as soon as a user can read a file, he can also
>> copy it, I was wondering if it is at all possible to grant the read
>> permission to the application, and bypass the user altogether. The
>> application has no Save menu available.
>
> Would ctrl+a, ctrl+c, and ctrl+v still work?

There might be a way to leverage the fact that ADSs aren't copied across
a network. A program running on a server with NTFS could conceivably
take excel file contents from an ADS (empty.xls:xlsdata) and send it to
the client machine while the client user (with maximum privileges with
regard to the server's files) couldn't easily retrieve that data because
any attempts would return only the empty.xls file and not the actual
data file. I'm not sure if your "really small application" could be
modified to use RPC to access the actual data or not - it might be a way
to approach the desired results. Your clients would have to have some
tricks up their sleeves to work around such measures.