My friend works for a company which requires her to use Microsoft specific application, she didn’t really want to switch to Win 11 and choose to just use Wine Linux package and install a 2016 version of MS office on her Linux laptop. That’s all well and good, but this company she is working for servers other clients at pretty high up places and she is terrified that she using the pirated version of MS would create a liability for her company as if Microsoft wants to target pirated software, they hunt for organisations rather than individuals.
So, what should she do? Is there a way you can hide the fact that the excel sheet was created on pirated software, is it even possible to tell excel sheets apart which are using pirated software?
PS: If there is a way to destroy all metadata related to the excel sheets, it would be very helpful.
edit: Thanks to everyone who chipped in for an answer, gonna suggest her to either ask her employer to give her the necessary software + hardware and if denied quit. I now realize this is not the norm in any company but hers. Anyways, thanks everyone.
Maybe ask the company if they can get you an O365-Account, so you can just use the web version of it or install that as webapp.
Sorry to say, but employees cost so much money in salary, those few bucks for software licenses are just minor.
Never pay for software for your job unless you’re self employed. That’s the employers responsibility.
Why isn’t the company paying for it? Anyways, you could just export it to a different format and then back to Excel depending on which features you’re using. But also, I think this is being paranoid. Microsoft isn’t the NSA
I’m going to assume that by the way you’re describing it, using an excel alternative is totally out of the question or simply not possible, but just in case it isn’t…
If you haven’t heard of it, check out LibreOffice.
I don’t think this is what she had in mind when she was thinking about changing metadata to look more legit.
PS: If there is a way to destroy all metadata related to excel sheets, it would be very helpful.
No, it would look like she is hiding something far worse.
It is an insane suggestion to even concider, it is far, far worse to have zero metadata than to have a bit of odd metadata.
If the sheets are tagged as being crested by a pirated version of excel then she could feign ignorance and pretend she has zero idea of what is going on, if the meta data is gone, she would be known as someone with something to hide.
Also, why the fuck is she editing company documents on her personal computer?
That is by far the main problem.
My friend works for a company which requires her to use Microsoft specific application
So the company needs to provide said friend with all the needed software.
Absolutely!
I don’t know for other countries but here in Germany the employer - by law - has to provide the employee with everything the employee needs to do the job he’s hired for.
I boldly assume this is the case in most countries.
In the US, this is generally true if the person is an employee… however if they’re a contractor it’s up to them to provide their own stuff, including health insurance and such. It’s why contractors get paid more, they theoretically have to cover all the other expenses around providing their services.
