You've just finished three weeks worth of work on a 25 page document that you need to submit to a committee across the country and to your peers within the office. After all the work you put into that document, you aren't real crazy about the idea of giving them your original, fully editable Word document, but what can you do to safeguard the document and limit the access to your original copy? There are several third-party software products that can be purchased and downloaded from the Internet, but MS Word has several options you may find helpful right from within the application itself. For the purpose of this article, we will be using Microsoft Word 2007.

If you just want to limit the access to the document, but allow others to make modifications to the document, you can encrypt the entire thing and require users to enter a password before they are able to open the document. To do this, follow these steps:

1. After you have created your document, save it in your normal location and fashion.

2. Click the Office Button in the upper left-hand corner of Word and go to Prepare --> Encrypt Document. You will be prompted to enter a password for this document. A few words on the password: Try to use a "strong" password, or one that contains at least eight characters and is a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. An example of a strong password is "Umlr.$%^8". An example of a weak password is "buffy1968". Any user, including yourself, who attempts to open the document from this point on, must enter the correct password. If the password is incorrect or lost, the document will no longer be viewable. Also, keep in mind that passwords are case-sensitive, so be sure to pass it along to others with the proper case format.

Encrypting the document with a password will allow only those with the password to access the document; however the document is still fully editable.

If you want to require your users to enter a password to access a document and also require a password to save modifications to the original document, follow these steps:

1. After you have created your document, save the document in your normal location and fashion.

2. Click the Office Button and click Save As. In the bottom left-hand corner of that dialogue box, click the drop-down arrow next to Tools and click General Options.

3. Here you have options to enter a password not only to open the document, but also to save modifications to the document. You will be limited to 15 characters for these passwords. Note that the second option for a password to save changes to the document, is not encrypted. This password option is designed only to allow you to collaborate with others you trust while still requiring a password to save changes.

4. To remove any password, follow steps 1 and 2 above, select the password and click Delete. Click the Save button and the password will be removed.

You can also limit formatting of the document to a pre-defined selection of styles, to force modifications to stay within a set style. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Review Tab.

2. Click Protect Document --> Restrict Formatting and Editing. A Restrict Formatting and Editing sidebar will appear and you will have the option to define formatting and editing restrictions for this document.

Rights to a document can also be restricted using Microsoft's Information Rights Management, or IRM. This is a service for a fee which authenticates the users who access an organization's documents. A free trial of this service is available through Microsoft.

If you would like to save your document in a format that will allow the reader to only read the document, without the capability to change any text or enter any modifications, you can save it as a .pdf file. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Create your document and save it in our normal fashion as a Word document.

2. Click the Office Button and click Save As --> Adobe PDF. You may also Apply Security to a PDF file by clicking Adobe PDF Conversion Options.

If you currently do not have Adobe PDF capabilities on your computer, use the OA PDF converter widget available in the OA Toolbox / Tools. This information will help you keep your Word documents safe and secure. Happy writing!