Thursday, August 01, 2013

Thursday Tutorial - Securing docs on Microsoft Word

My super newest friend has got to be Jessica Ivey, which I'm sure y'all know her better by Jivey. If you don't, she's cool. You'll like her.

Enough sucking up to my work colleague, let's get to the point of what this post is going to be about. I mentioned Jessica because in her uber-helpful section called Techy Tips she put out a post on how to secure your TpT products using pdf files. It's simple and straight forward, but something you definitely need to be careful with. If you are using other TpT sellers' products such as clipart or backgrounds, you need to check out that post. Most folks are stressing that you must 'secure' your materials if you are using their products. I will definitely be using Jessica's tips from here on out.

The big problem then is how to secure it so that folks can't just right click on an image such as those super cute super hero kids from Creative Clips and use them in Evil Pirate Ways. I don't want that to happen at all. I know how much hard work is put into these products, and to provide a way for some to take them without asking would make me feel horrible. 

As I was creating my new Common Core product for teachers to display which standard they are working on, I started wondering if there was a way to secure documents in Microsoft Word. Lo' and behold, there is. 

I found the answer on eHow. This is going to show you how to create a 'read only' file so folks will only be able to view and print out your document and not be able to click or alter anything you've included. I'm going to elaborate on that (read as 'with pictures') to share what I learned. Their process to secure Microsoft Word documents seems pretty easy, which I am thankful for. So let's get started.

1. Open the document you've created in Microsoft Word that you want to secure.

2. Click on the big Microsoft Office button.

 And choose the 'Prepare' option right under Print. 

3. Out of the options you have there is 'Mark as Final'. It will prevent users from editing the file, as they will only be able to view and print it.


Hopefully this will thwart all of the Evil Piracy Lords and Ladies out there and will protect the amazing work on my fellow TpT sellers.

**Hindsight:
I sent Jessica a file made with this trick and sadly, she was still able to get into it after a simple click.

When you open it a window pops up that announces, "The author has locked this to discourage editing, are you sure you want to enable editing?"

Click... and she was in.

GRRR!

Back to the drawing board.



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