Implement Read-Only Protection
Encryption provides effective protection for your important documents, but other documents may need a lesser degree of protection. Word's weakest form of protection is read-only protection, which you can set to recommend to your colleagues that they open a document in a read-only format so that they can't save changes to the original document.
When you implement read-only protection, Word displays a message box like that shown next when someone goes to open the document. You can see the weakness: The user can simply click the No button to open the document with full editing privileges.
To implement read-only protection, follow these steps:
- Click the Office button, and then click Save As. Word displays the Save As dialog box.
- Click the Tools button (to the left of the Save button), and then choose General Options from the pop-up menu. Word displays the General Options dialog box.
- Select the Read-Only Recommended check box.
- Click the OK button. Word closes the General Options dialog box, returning you to the Save As dialog box.
- Click the Save button. Word closes the Save As dialog box and saves the document.
When you open a document in read-only mode, Word displays "(Read-Only)" in the title bar to remind you. You can make changes freely-but you can't save them to the original document. Instead, click the Office Button, click Save As, and then specify a different filename or folder.
Don't rely on read-only protection to keep unwanted changes out of your documents. Always back up such documents so that you can quickly recover from unwanted changes.
