Locking Macroexpress Down...

[ChilleeB]

Hi folks,

A newbie here with a question. We use MacroExpress within our organization. Essentially, what we need to do is let our end users have access to our specific Macros that we have developed, but not let them have access to the editor to edit our Macros, or worse yet, make their own. We realize that we can password protect the editor but it seems that is only useful for the specific user account that it is set up on. Our representatives often find themselves logging onto and working on many computers during the work week.

 

Does anyone know if there are steps that we as administrators can take that will lock the machine down so that we will only have to set it up once on each machine?

[joe]

Welcome to the group ChilleeB!

 

You can setup an installation procedure that does not install the editor-half of Macro Express on the workstations. Without the editor, macros can only be run. Here is an excerpt from the Macro Express Explained book that may help:

Advanced Installation

Advanced installation is a way to answer all the basic installation questions without needing to prompt you, or your users, for answers. This is great for installing Macro Express across a network or even … and get this … from another setup.exe program. If you have macro libraries, graphics, programs, and so forth that need to be installed on individual workstations, pack them into a setup.exe program, and have the installation done from a single file. There are hundreds of installer packages available in the market.

 

Taking advantage of the advanced installation feature is easy. Just add a /S and/or /M flag to the macex.exe command line. For example "macex.exe /S /M=<Your Install File>". Case does not matter but the "/" slash character does. Do not use a "-" dash, it will not work. Also, /S must precede /M when used together.

 

The /S flag tells Macro Express to install silently without screen prompts and questions, using default choices. If you do not want to use the defaults, then install Macro Express with the /M=<Your Install File> flag. For those of you who do not care about a silent install, and still do not want to use the defaults, then use /M without /S. Your choices will be conveniently displayed during installation.

 

Although any path and filename will do for your installation text file, we will use "C:\YourChoices.txt" for our example. An installation text file can be created with any text editor. The Macro Express help system says not to place any invalid options or comments in it. A comment is simply a line in the text file that does not begin with one of the legal option names. This is good advice. On the other hand, I must confess to putting comments into the file without anything bad happening.

 

There are 15 different options. The following five options are related to the Select Components dialog. Note the default answer for each option is shown first. If any options are left out of your file, or do not contain a specific "Y" or "N", then the default for that option will be used automatically by the installer. The option name may be upper, lower, or mixed case. There can be no spaces between it, the equal sign, and the answer. Last, but not least, some, but not all Macro Express installation options are double-negative type questions, so be careful.

[ChilleeB]

Thanks Joe, I appreciate the info. I'll be using it real soon.

[Cory]

I didn't realise this was an option, I'll have to try that!

 

I think I'll buy your book now, been putting it off to long.