We need to share important working documents but we want to avoid that any indiscreet eye can read confidential data "> By clicking on the icon we can select a series of items designed to adequately protect the document: to prevent the opening of the file, select Encrypt with password, enter twice the chosen password and confirm on OK ; now all we have to do is save the file (by pressing on the keyboard CTRL + B or CTRL + S), close Office and check that, when opening the file, we are asked for the chosen password.
To remove any password, simply open the document, enter the password used so far, go back to Protect document and click on Encrypt with password again, taking care to leave this field empty this time (just delete the dots and press OK ).
The procedure is valid on any Office program: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the other programs contained in the work suite produced by Microsoft.
Change protection
If, on the other hand, we want to protect our Office documents from changes, we will have to set the level of changes to be blocked (given that some documents have text fields or useful ticks for filling in).
We open the document, go back to the File menu and, from the Protect document menu, select the Restrict modification item. A new sidebar will open on the document, from which you can decide whether to apply restrictions on formatting or restrictions on changes.
For the purpose of this guide we place a check mark on Allow only this type of changes in the document and, in the drop-down menu, select one of the available items: No changes (read-only), Revisions, Comments and Form filling .
If we are part of a corporate network and we have other users registered in the same corporate Office, we can also limit the changes to a specific group, choosing in the Exceptions field (optional) who is affected by the limitation to the changes.
To confirm the application of the protection, click below on Yes, apply protection ; a window will now open in which to enter the chosen protection password (possibly different from the one entered for access) or, alternatively, enter authentication using administrative credentials (only the PC or Windows account that we are using at the moment can make changes).
If we use password authentication we can integrate the access lock, seen in the first chapter, without any problem.
If instead we use user authentication, the document will be immediately encrypted and can only be viewed by authorized users, who in any case will not be able to modify it (only our account is authorized for modifications).
To remove this type of protection, simply repeat all the steps already seen, remove the check mark on Allow only this type of changes in the document .
How to protect documents on LibreOffice
Office is a very expensive work suite, sold by Microsoft for hundreds of Euros, therefore difficult to buy from ordinary users or home users. As a valid alternative we can always use the LibreOffice suite on our computers, available for free.Let's see together how to protect access to the document and how to prevent unauthorized changes.
Opening protection
To protect the most important documents, we open LibreOffice, choose the program to start, create the document and, when saving, click at the top on File -> Save As .
In the save window, we choose a name for the file, the path where to save it and make sure to put a check mark on Save with password, then click on Save at the bottom.
An additional window will open, where you can enter the chosen password twice; when ready just click OK to save the document. From now on, only those who know the password will be able to open the file and view its contents.
Change protection
If instead we wanted to protect the document from unwanted changes, we repeat the steps seen in the previous chapter, that is, go to File -> Save As, put the check mark on Save with password, then click on the bottom on Save . In the window in which to enter the opening password, we expand the Options item, we tick the Open file read-only item, then we enter a different password than the one set for opening.
We click OK to confirm. From now on, we will be able to open the document as read-only, without being able to make any changes (regardless of whether or not we have protected access to the file). To make changes to the protected document, click on the Edit menu at the top, select the Modification mode item and enter the unlock password chosen to protect the changes.
Conclusions
In this guide we have seen together how to protect documents when opening and how to protect documents from changes, both if we use Office and if we use the free LibreOffice suite.Alternatively, we can protect one or more by applying protection directly to folders, as well described in our guide on how to protect files and folders with passwords .
To protect documents from changes another method (widely used) involves converting the Office document to PDF, as described in the guide on how to protect a PDF file with a password so as not to open or edit it .
