'What is the most safe way to protect Word document from editing and copying [closed]
I need to protect my Microsoft Word document against text copying.
I have found a solution in restricting the permissions described here.
Instead of "No Changes (Read only)", I use "Filling in forms" and then insert the password.
My question is: is this way really safe? Can't someone hack my password?
PS: I have read that it is possible to save the document as HTML and then to find the hex version of pass in the code of the document. But I myself couldn't decrypt it.
Solution 1:[1]
I agree completely with what Marcos says. However there is a more secure way than using forms protection (which is in no way secure!) to prevent copying from within the Word application interface. Look up the term "Information Rights Management" in connection with the version of Office you're using.
Solution 2:[2]
As long as anybody can read it, there's no way you can prevent people from copying and pasting it in another file with a 100% success.
Even if selection is disabled, you would still need to deal with the analog hole. In layman's terms, there's nothing you can do to prevent people from, for example, printing it then OCRing it to a new Word document, getting an editable version that way.
That said, you're probably better exporting to PDF if you want to prevent most people from editing them.
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
| Solution | Source |
|---|---|
| Solution 1 | Cindy Meister |
| Solution 2 | Marcos Vives Del Sol |