Robin Laing wrote:
On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 20:40 +1100, Terry wrote:
Below is a request for help from a lady who risks being failed in a
professional exam because she used Calc to complete an Excel spreadsheet.
It seems that certain safeguards implanted by Excel were lost in the
process.
Is there any way for her to escape this predicament? She filed this
request with the Calc list and has also asked on the Calc forum. I have
asked on the users list whether there is some other avenue she might try.
This seems to be a trap about which potential users need to be warned.
Mabel Li wrote:
Hi,
<snip>
The feedback I received from the Institute is, and I quote is as follows:
(EP stands for Extension Project) ...
"Your EP received a result of zero. The reason you received no marks
is that
we were specific in our FAQs for this EP and you have breached these
requirements. For example, important fields such as program range
names and
secret IDs had been removed from your submitted Excel EP file, thus
cannot
be marked. Also candidates had been clearly advised not to copy any
formulae
from other worksheets or delete any formulae, field names or
columns/rows in
your workbooks as this would result in a zero result. I would again
refer to
you the FAQs for the EP."
From reading the other threads regarding security, it appears that
whatever
security features that are embedded in Excel are removed once you open
the
file with Calc. Is this correct? If that is the case, how can I prove
this?
Thank you for assistance,
Mabel Li
I will agree with Paul's comments but I would also tell Mabel to respond
with a copy of OOo and ask them to try the security features of their
Excel spreadsheet in OOo themselves and see the results.
I would also be inclined to look at the appeals process and learn as
much as possible about the requirements. If there was no mandate to use
MS Office for the course then they shouldn't be able to enforce the
usage of a MS Office product. The software should also have been part
of the course if it was mandatory.
Depending on the type of "safeguards", they may be known weaknesses in
Excel that can be referenced to in the appeal. Such as the poor
password and protection offered by Excel.
Thanks. Those are valid points. I doubt that the OS and software
version makes any difference.
This is another example of an organisation unwittingly acting as a
franchisee of M$.
It also, however, raises the need for OpenOffice to issue a caveat
against its use for official documents created by other software.
--
Xfce on PCLinuxOS, OOo 2.0.2 (en_GB).
Direct mail to teaman is not opened; if necessary, email realmail.
If you're seeking, check out http://www.rci.org.au
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
