how to make edits to protected word document

Here's a list of large serious organizations that made the same mistake, disclosing draft versions of their document unintentionally. Yet it is! If you would send a Word document by e-mail while you've made changes with Track Changes enabled, someone could easily find what changes you've made.Īnd you wouldn't be the first to fall for it. However, if I set it to No Markup it looks as if the old text is not there anymore: I can make changes, and then it looks like this if I enable All Markup in the tracking settings: In case it's enabled and my original text looks like this: If track changes is enabled, people can see what you've changed. In this case you can safely edit the document, save it, and send it as an attachment without anyone finding out what you've changed. You can check in the Review panel if Track Changes is on or off (here it's off): Track changes allows you to make changes, while the old text remains available.

Hosted online in Google Docs, OneDrive, Sharepoint, the cloud (❗ people might see your edit history).

Track changes enabled (❗ people might see your edit history).

Track changes disabled (✔: nobody can see your edit history).

I think there are a couple cases with Word files (tl dr conclusion in parenthesis):

Note: For turning off the Read-only view, please (1) click Review > Restrict Editing to enabling the Restrict Editing pane, (2) Click the Stop Protection button, and then (3) type the specified password in the popping out Unprotect Document dialog box.It's not as straightforward as the initial revision of the answer of Guest suggests.

See below screenshot:įrom now on, the whole document is read-only, and any users are prevented from editing this document. In the opening Start Enforcing Protection dialog box, please type password into both Enter new password (optional) and Reenter password to confirm boxes, and click the OK button. In the Restrict Editing pane, please (1) check the Allow only this type of editing in the document option, (2) select Filling in forms from the below drop down list, and then (3) click the Yes, Start Enforcing Protection button.

Click Review > Restrict Editing to enable the Restrict Editing pane. If you need to make an opening Word document read only after editing, you can apply the Restrict Editing feature to get it done easily.ġ.

How to make edits to protected word document