Anonymize Excel Data Add-In

An Excel 2007 add-in is needed, which anonymizes selected cells in an Excel sheet. A setup must be written, which installs the add-in? on a given machine. ## Deliverables When the add-in is installed, an icon appears on the Excel 2007 ribbon under add-ins. To anonymize data on a sheet, the user selects one or cells (blocks with several ranges, selected using shift or ctrl, must be supported). Then the user clicks the icon to anonymize the data in the selected sheets. The add-in displays a warning: "Data in all selected cells will be destroyed. Are you sure you want to proceed?" The warning is only displayed the first time the icon is clicked, and again in every new session. If the user selects to proceed, each cell is anonymized. Only cells containing text and values are anonymized. Formulas are left intact. - The text is parsed, character by character, and each character or number is replaced by another using a random function. - Alpha characters are replaced by other alpha characters, numbers are replaced by other numbers, spaces and special characters are left as they are. Example: "15, Casualina Way" might be anonymized to "76, Tuisdzhjk Trw" While the operation is running, a progress bar or a text is displayed, which shows something like "15 of 780 cells have been anonymized."