catching a cheater (Office 2003)

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I set up an Excel spreadsheet as a test template for a high school computer class. Each student opened the original template and took the test, then saved their finished test in a common folder using their first name as a file name. Normally, I am able to trust this system, but today I am 99.99% certain that one student opened up the finished test of another person, then resaved it as their own.

Is there some type of embeded information in the file structure that I could somehow open up and read to see if there would be definitive proof that one was copied from the other? (since I created the original file myself, looking at the file properties|file summary | advanced shows the same info for both.

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Has the “Remove personal information from file properties on save” check box been ticked in the Security tab of Tools | Options…?
If so, you can’t see who edited the workbook.
Otherwise, opening the workbook and saving it under another name will cause the username to appear in the Last Saved By property in the Statistics tab of File | Properties.
You can also open the workbook in Word with the “Recover Text from Any File” option. You should see a list of users who edited the workbook near the end of the file.
Warning: don’t save the workbook from Word!
But if the student simply copied the workbook of another student and renamed the copy, the Last Saved By property will still be that of the other student.
Perhaps the network administrator can check the log files for the folder to see who manipulated the document.

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So what you are saying is,
copy and rename the workbook, then
open the workbook and then save it.
..so that the Last Saved By is updated ‘correctly’

Then perhaps you’ll need to use a utility like ‘TouchPro’ to backdate the file date/timestamp properties to cover yourself and..

..whoa. I was getting carried away there.

Maybe it would be easier just to do the test.

zeddy

zeddy

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