Privacy
Vertical Tabs is a desktop add-in that does not talk to the internet. Almost everything below is about the one moment that does involve us: buying a licence.
Version 1.1 · In force from 16 September 2026
The short version. The add-in on your computer sends nothing anywhere — no telemetry, no account, no licence server, and not one cell of your workbooks. Buying a licence creates three facts we keep: your name, your email address, and the key we issued you. This website counts visits with Google Analytics only if you say yes, and we will never sell or share your details for anyone else’s marketing.
1Who is responsible
The data controller is STRUCTURES.LV SIA, a limited liability company registered in Latvia under number 41203065119, with its registered office at Džohara Dudajeva gatve 11 – 72, Rīga, LV-1084, Latvia. For anything at all to do with your data, including any of the requests in section 6, email support@excelverticaltabs.com and a person will read it.
There is no data protection officer, because the scale of this does not require one.
2What the add-in does not collect
This deserves stating plainly, because add-ins have a reputation to overcome. Vertical Tabs makes no network connection of any kind. It has no analytics, no crash reporting, no update check and no account. Your licence key is verified by a signature check performed entirely on your own computer, so even activation involves no call to us.
Your workbooks never leave your machine. The add-in reads the names, order and visibility of your sheets to draw the pane, and that reading happens in Excel’s own memory on your computer. Nothing about a workbook — no filename, no sheet name, no cell — is transmitted, stored by us, or seen by us.
A few things are written on your computer, and stay there:
| What | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your licence key, the date your trial began, and the pane’s width and visibility | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VerticalTabs\State |
So you enter your key once, the trial can count seven days, and the pane opens as you left it |
| A second copy of the date your trial began | %LOCALAPPDATA%\VerticalTabs\state (a hidden file) |
So the trial cannot be restarted just by clearing the registry |
| A diagnostic log | %LOCALAPPDATA%\VerticalTabs\logs\verticaltabs.log |
So that if something misbehaves there is something to look at |
All of it is yours, and nothing reads it but the add-in. Uninstalling removes the log but
keeps the rest, so that reinstalling or upgrading does not cost you your licence. To
remove everything, delete the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VerticalTabs and the folder
%LOCALAPPDATA%\VerticalTabs. If you ever send us a log file to help diagnose
a problem, that is your decision and you can read it first.
3What buying a licence collects
Purchases go through Paddle.com Market Ltd, which is the merchant of record and handles the payment itself. Paddle collects your payment details, billing address and tax location. We never see your card details. Paddle is an independent controller of what it collects — see the Paddle privacy notice.
Paddle then tells us that a purchase completed, and our system issues the key. What we hold as a result is:
| Data | Why we hold it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Your name | It is printed inside the licence key, so the key says who it belongs to | Performance of our contract with you |
| Your email address | To send you the key, and to send it again if you lose it | Performance of our contract with you |
| The licence key issued, and when | To re-issue it on request, and to answer support questions | Performance of our contract with you |
| The Paddle transaction id | To make sure one purchase mints exactly one key, and to match a refund request to a sale | Our legitimate interest in issuing keys correctly |
| Anything you write to support | To answer you, and to remember the conversation if you write again | Our legitimate interest in supporting our customers |
That is the whole list. We do not build a profile, we do not run automated decision-making, and we do not send marketing email — the only messages we will ever send you are your licence key and replies to things you ask us.
4Where it is kept, and who else touches it
The licence record lives in Microsoft Azure Table Storage in the Sweden Central (Sweden) region. We use three processors, each doing one job:
| Who | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Paddle.com Market Ltd | Takes the payment and passes on the buyer’s name and email | United Kingdom / EU |
| Microsoft Azure | Runs the function that issues keys and stores the licence table | Sweden Central, Sweden |
| Resend | Delivers the licence email | United States |
Sending the licence email means your name and email address reach a provider in the United States. That transfer is covered by the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in the provider’s data processing agreement. No one else receives your data, and we will never sell it, rent it, or hand it over for anyone else’s marketing. We would disclose it only if the law required us to.
5How long it is kept
- Your licence record — for as long as the licence is valid, which is indefinitely. The whole point of keeping it is that you can write to us in five years having lost your key, and we can send it back. Ask us to erase it and we will, but then we can no longer re-issue your key.
- Support emails — 24 months after the conversation ends.
- Payment and tax records — kept by Paddle for as long as tax law requires, typically several years. That is Paddle’s obligation, not ours, and it is not something we can shorten.
6Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of what we hold about you, correct it, erase it, restrict what we do with it, hand it over in a portable form, or object to our processing it on the basis of legitimate interest. Email support@excelverticaltabs.com. We will respond within one month, and there is no charge.
Given the size of the list in section 3, most of these amount to us reading you one row of a table, which we are happy to do.
If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first — but you have the right to complain to a supervisory authority regardless. Ours is the Data State Inspectorate of Latvia, and you may also complain to the authority in the EU country where you live or work.
7This website
The first time you visit, a small bar asks whether we may use analytics cookies. Until you answer OK, nothing from Google Analytics loads and no cookie is set. Answer No and it stays that way.
If you answer OK, we use Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Limited) to
count visits, see which pages and links are used, and tell whether a trial download or a
purchase followed a visit. Google sets the cookies _ga and
_ga_…, which last up to two years, and receives your IP address,
browser details and the pages you view. Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses.
We have turned off Google signals and advertising features, so this data is not used for
ads or linked to a Google account. Reports are kept for 14 months. Google may process
the data in the United States under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. The legal
basis is your consent, and your choice is remembered in your browser’s local
storage under vt-consent.
You can change your mind at any time with the Cookies link at the
bottom of every page; answering No removes the Google Analytics cookies. Blocking
googletagmanager.com in your browser works too. See
Google’s privacy policy.
Two other third parties are involved in loading the site:
- Google Fonts serves the typefaces, which means Google receives your IP address when the page loads.
- Paddle supplies the checkout and shows the price in your own currency. To do that, Paddle sees your IP address to work out which country you are in, and once you open the checkout Paddle sets what it needs to run it. That is covered by Paddle’s own privacy notice, linked in section 3.
The website is hosted on Microsoft Azure Static Web Apps, whose ordinary server logs may briefly record your IP address, as any web server does.
8Changes
If this policy changes, the new version appears here with a new date at the top. If a change materially affects people who have already bought — a new processor, say, or a new purpose — we will email everyone holding a licence rather than leave it to be discovered.