How do I make a word file unchangeable?

Hello,

How do I make a Microsoft Word file unchangeable or permanent

so when I send it or upload it it will be like a PDF so no one can

edit it? I am working in Microsoft 2008 version 12.3.0.

Thank you for your help - Mike

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Answer

John McGhie

Hi Mike:

The smart-a**se answer is "Save as PDF" :-)

The issue you are up against is that Word documents are designed to be edited, and always will be. PDF documents are designed to be non-editable, and generally will be.

You can set a "Password to modify" (Word>Preferences>Security) but this really only serves to protect YOUR copy, because if the document gets to someone else's computer, it's trivial for them to copy all its text into another document then do whatever you like to it.

PC Word supports output to XPS (XML Paper Specification) which serves the same purpose as PDF, and generally suffers from the same limitations:

There is nothing you can do to a Word document that will prevent someone being able to change it. If they can read it, they can change it; and there's nothing that will prevent that. For example: they could re-type it! Copy bits out of it and change it! Save it in another format and change it.

However you CAN digitally sign the document, in which case if someone HAS changed it, you can tell: because the digital signature will be invalid.

Office 2008 will not do Digital Signatures. But Outlook 2011 will, in Office 2011. You can't sign the DOCUMENT, but you can sign the email that contains it. They can't change the document without changing the email, so you can say "If the copy of the document you are looking at is not in the email I sent, then that's not the original and I won't stand by it."

See here:

http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/office/14/en-us/outlook/item/9e49be71-282d-4722-b3ac-f3ce542a50f5

I am assuming that you are required to send Word .doc or .txt because they INTEND to change it :-) The place you get this most often is Employment Agents, who intend to machine-parse the document into a series of noun strings and store it in a database. Anything you were to do that would "secure" the document would also prevent them from parsing it. And if they can't parse it, they can't use it: it's as if they never received it.

So your first problem is to enquire as to exactly which formats ARE acceptable to them. GIF is one of my favourites (Fax format). That's almost impossible to change: but it's also impossible to parse.

Hope this helps

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer.

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Answer

Jim_ Gordon

Hi Mike,

The topic of your other question is different enough that I think that question can stand on its own.

Yet another option available to you is to Print and choose Save As PDF from the pop-up menu shown here:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/office-2011-for-mac-printing-options-in-word.html

In the Save dialog there's a Security Options button that lets you set protection options. Keep in mind that anyone can take a screen shot of your document at any time (even using a cell phone camera).

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