Protected power calculation spread sheets

[rickman]

I have a couple of spread sheets from FPGA vendors for power
calculation. They "protect" the spread sheet, I assume so that you
don't mess with the calculations. I find that my anti-virus software
can't open the document and reports an error every time it is scanned.
I tried to disable the protection, but that option is not available on
these files. Anyone know what is going on? Even if I need a password
to unprotect the workbook, I can't find where to enter it.

I guess I can just delete it to get it off the PC and download it fresh
each time I need to use it, or maybe put it on a CD. But I am tired of
going through a list of dozens of errors on protected files each time I
run my AVS and I am getting rid of them one way or the other.

[Bill Martin]

My first response would be to ask the FPGA vendor. Explain your problem and see
what they suggest. It's in their interest to make this as easy as possible for
you, and I've always found them helpful.

Alternatively, you can probably convince your AV software to ignore files you
place in certain subdirectories or some such. It depends on whose AV software
you use.

Bill
----------------------------
rickman wrote:
> I have a couple of spread sheets from FPGA vendors for power
> calculation. They "protect" the spread sheet, I assume so that you
> don't mess with the calculations. I find that my anti-virus software
> can't open the document and reports an error every time it is scanned.
> I tried to disable the protection, but that option is not available on
> these files. Anyone know what is going on? Even if I need a password
> to unprotect the workbook, I can't find where to enter it.
>
> I guess I can just delete it to get it off the PC and download it fresh
> each time I need to use it, or maybe put it on a CD. But I am tired of
> going through a list of dozens of errors on protected files each time I
> run my AVS and I am getting rid of them one way or the other.
>

[v_mirgorodsky@yahoo.com]

You could also put the file into any password protected archive, like
ZIP. This way antivirus will see the archive, but will not scan its
contents.

WBR,
Vladimir Mirgorodsky


Bill Martin wrote:
> My first response would be to ask the FPGA vendor. Explain your problem and see
> what they suggest. It's in their interest to make this as easy as possible for
> you, and I've always found them helpful.
>
> Alternatively, you can probably convince your AV software to ignore files you
> place in certain subdirectories or some such. It depends on whose AV software
> you use.
>
> Bill
> ----------------------------
> rickman wrote:
> > I have a couple of spread sheets from FPGA vendors for power
> > calculation. They "protect" the spread sheet, I assume so that you
> > don't mess with the calculations. I find that my anti-virus software
> > can't open the document and reports an error every time it is scanned.
> > I tried to disable the protection, but that option is not available on
> > these files. Anyone know what is going on? Even if I need a password
> > to unprotect the workbook, I can't find where to enter it.
> >
> > I guess I can just delete it to get it off the PC and download it fresh
> > each time I need to use it, or maybe put it on a CD. But I am tired of
> > going through a list of dozens of errors on protected files each time I
> > run my AVS and I am getting rid of them one way or the other.
> >

[James T. White]

"rickman" <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1139168954.693365.257390@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
> I have a couple of spread sheets from FPGA vendors for power
> calculation. They "protect" the spread sheet, I assume so that you
> don't mess with the calculations. I find that my anti-virus software
> can't open the document and reports an error every time it is scanned.
> I tried to disable the protection, but that option is not available on
> these files. Anyone know what is going on? Even if I need a
> password to unprotect the workbook, I can't find where to enter it.
>
> I guess I can just delete it to get it off the PC and download it
> fresh each time I need to use it, or maybe put it on a CD. But I am
> tired of going through a list of dozens of errors on protected files
> each time I run my AVS and I am getting rid of them one way or the
> other.

You might give this a try if the vendor won't give you the password -
http://www.lostpassword.com/excel.htm

--
James T. White

[rickman]

I haven't gotten that far yet. I can't even find how to tell it I want
to unprotect it. I guess I'll just have to tell the AVS to skip this
file.


James T. White wrote:
> "rickman" <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1139168954.693365.257390@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
> > I have a couple of spread sheets from FPGA vendors for power
> > calculation. They "protect" the spread sheet, I assume so that you
> > don't mess with the calculations. I find that my anti-virus software
> > can't open the document and reports an error every time it is scanned.
> > I tried to disable the protection, but that option is not available on
> > these files. Anyone know what is going on? Even if I need a
> > password to unprotect the workbook, I can't find where to enter it.
> >
> > I guess I can just delete it to get it off the PC and download it
> > fresh each time I need to use it, or maybe put it on a CD. But I am
> > tired of going through a list of dozens of errors on protected files
> > each time I run my AVS and I am getting rid of them one way or the
> > other.
>
> You might give this a try if the vendor won't give you the password -
> http://www.lostpassword.com/excel.htm
>
> --
> James T. White

[paul.leventis@gmail.com]

Hi Rick,

I am guessing you are trying to use Altera's Early Power Estimator,
since as best as I know Xilinx only has the web thing. Please send me
the details on your problem -- the anti-virus software you are using,
exact error message, and version & target architecture of the EPE you
are using.

Sheet protection & code hiding are used for a few reasons. First, to
protect our users from themselves -- we would probably have a lot of
"bugs", or worse "bad estimates" that were actually due to a
copy-and-paste gone mad. Trust me, I've done that to myself enough
times with the unprotected version. Second, we would rather not have
to explain exactly how everything works under the hood, and we wouldn't
want to share those workings with our competitors. Sure, password
cracking is readily available, but I am unsure of the legality (never
mind the ethics) of using such a technique, particularly for
competitive analysis purposes.

Regards,

Paul Leventis
Altera Corp.

[rickman]

paul.leventis@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> I am guessing you are trying to use Altera's Early Power Estimator,
> since as best as I know Xilinx only has the web thing. Please send me
> the details on your problem -- the anti-virus software you are using,
> exact error message, and version & target architecture of the EPE you
> are using.
>
> Sheet protection & code hiding are used for a few reasons. First, to
> protect our users from themselves -- we would probably have a lot of
> "bugs", or worse "bad estimates" that were actually due to a
> copy-and-paste gone mad. Trust me, I've done that to myself enough
> times with the unprotected version. Second, we would rather not have
> to explain exactly how everything works under the hood, and we wouldn't
> want to share those workings with our competitors. Sure, password
> cracking is readily available, but I am unsure of the legality (never
> mind the ethics) of using such a technique, particularly for
> competitive analysis purposes.

Paul,

Thanks for your interest. Yes, this is an Altera spread sheet, but I
seem to recall having one from Xilinx as well, but that would be pretty
old by now. This one is old too, I'm just a pack rat when it come to
my hard drive.

I'm not going to worry about it further. This is only two blips in a
very lengthly error report. The AVS is Sophos and it makes multiple
reports on some files when they are accessed and list the same error
several hundred times. I'm not sure what is up with that, but it may
have to do with AV scans being done on the same hard drive by two
different machines at the same time.

It just happened that these two files were the first in the report so I
tackled them first. I have since moved on to more fruitful error
reports.