Read-Only Protected Docs

Lance Goodthrust · Post by **Lance Goodthrust** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:45 pm

This is for work so help me be a star.

We want to be able to e-mail word docs to loan brokers to cut down on our paper consumption. Is there a way to make them read-only on the recieving end so they cannot alter the documents? I tried right click - read-only and sent it to another address, but I could change the docs in the new terminal.

Your help would be much appreciated.

squ1d · Post by **squ1d** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:50 pm

You can put a certificate on them, but really, your best bet is to turn them into PDFs. Does your company have Adobe 6 Pro? That app supports PDF making without any add-ons.

Your other option is to put a password on the Word document....(Tools -> Protect Document) BUT....this is easily beat if they can at least open the document as all you have to do is save the document in a version of Word prior to Word 97.....where document security is ignored.

What version of Word do you have and what version do they have?

I highly suggest going the PDF route if they are not needing to make any changes.....

Lance Goodthrust · Post by **Lance Goodthrust** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:14 pm

Thanks for the info squ1d. There are many different brokers, so I don't know what they are all running or how tech savy they are. I'll look into it and check back.

Thanks again.

rakesh1 · Post by **rakesh1** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:32 pm

yea, i was going to suggest pdf, thats pretty standard. thats how the govt does it, too

Jennie C · Post by **Jennie C** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:35 pm

Yeah, but you can edit a PDF pretty easily as well. I do it at work all the time.

squ1d · Post by **squ1d** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:47 pm

Not if you change the security on it and limit the printing and editing rights....

Then your best bet is a screen capture, print out and then use an OCR to scan it back into Word or word processing app of your choice.....which = a huge pain in the ass.

Jennie C · Post by **Jennie C** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:25 pm

squ1d wrote:Not if you change the security on it and limit the printing and editing rights....

Hmmm, I didn't know you could do that, my bad.

squ1d · Post by **squ1d** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:28 pm

Nah it's cool, didn't mean to come off like a dick.....I was just saying.....thanks for bringing that up though because Lance might not have known that.