Administrative Sparkle Blog

Most people aren’t aware that you do not have to spend a lot of money to buy Adobe Acrobat to send a document that you do not want the content to be changed, such as agreements and contracts. Although Adobe Reader is free to download so anybody should be able to receive a document in pdf, if you do not have Adobe Acrobat or another program that manipulates pdf documents, you will not be able to create or convert documents to pdf.

Here is an alternate solution to sending a document that will protect individual content controls or to a group of controls with limited permissions and/or access directly from Word. (Note: I use Word 2007, so this may not apply to other versions of Word or the directions to apply may be different.)

Select Review and then select Protect Document.

1. If you want to limit the formatting that readers can apply, select Limit formatting to a selection of styles check box. By clicking on the Settings, you will be given a selection of styles to choose from.

2. If you want to allow readers to add comments only or track changes and comments, select the Allow only this type of editing in the document check box, and then click the editing level that you want. Editing levels consist of No changes (Read only), Tracked changes, Comments, and Filling in forms. You can select parts of the document and choose users who are allowed to freely edit by using Exceptions. (Note: The Exceptions tool only works on a network where users are listed in a domain.)

3. Start enforcement, click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection. This will prompt you to assign a password to the document so that only reviewers who know the password can remove the protection. (Note: Keep in mind that if you choose not to use a password, readers can change your editing restrictions.)

This technique allows you to transmit a document with the confidence of knowing that that the content cannot be altered. It eliminates having to save an additional file; when changes are made to the Word document, you do not have to remember to overwrite the converted pdf file; and you do not have to purchase a pdf program, such as Adobe Acrobat.

Hope this helps.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.