This tutorial will teach you how to protect all or part of your Microsoft Word document using this feature called “Restrict editing“. This function allows you to mark the document as “Read only“ and always allows modifications or changes in selected parts of the document. Restricting the modification locks certain lines or sentences in the document, which may be important or sensitive and, therefore, cannot be modified by anyone. This is how you can protect the content in an MS Word document.
Protect Word Document Using Restrict Editing
Unrestricted portions of the document can be made available to anyone, or you can only authorize certain users to edit or make changes. You can also protect the entire document and make it read-only. Let’s see how it can be done.
To start, open the MS Word document and click on the ‘Review’ tongue.
Select the sentences to which you do not want the change restriction function to be applied. In this case, I selected sentences 1 and 2 only. in the Review tongue, ‘Protect’ group click “Restrict modification” as shown in the picture.
The Restrict Editing dialog box opens. You will see the following:
- Formatting restrictions
- Modification of restrictions
- Exceptions
- Start the application
1]Formatting restrictions
This setting limits formatting to a certain selection of formats or styles. You can select the styles you want to allow in the document. To apply this, check the box.
2]Modification of restrictions
Under Edit Restrictions, check the box that says – Only allow this type of change in the document.
In addition, click on the drop-down menu and choose the option “No changes (read only)”. The document becomes read-only, except for the selected parts. You can also choose other options such as tracked changes, comments, and filling in forms, depending on the changes you want to allow.
Exceptions (optional)
This section allows you to choose the users who can freely edit the document. To allow anyone and everyone to edit the selected part of the document, select ‘Everyone’ check box. You can also enter user names separately, separated by a semicolon.
3]Start application
To apply all of these settings to your MS Word document, click “Yes, start applying protection”.
the “Start applying protection” The dialog opens. You will see two methods of protection – Password and User authentication. Select the ‘Password’ Protection method and enter and re-enter the password generated in the boxes provided. hurry OKAY.
To encrypt the MS Word document, so that only the authenticated owners of the document can remove the protection, click ‘User authentication’.
Advice:
- Use strong passwords involving a combination of upper and lower case letters, letters, numbers and symbols.
- Make sure you save the password securely in a safe place. If you forget the password, you will not be able to recover it.
- Document encryption prevents other users from working on the document at the same time.
How to unlock the protected Word document
To remove all protection from the document, click on the “Stop Protection” button. If you are prompted for the password, enter it.
Note: To remove any protection from the document, you must know the password that was applied to the document. Or, you will need to be listed as the authenticated owner of the document. Do this, click on the Revision tab> Restrict modification> Stop protection.
This way you can protect your MS Word document by using the “Restrict modification” in the Review tab.
