We have a Word 2007 document thate contains sensitive information and we need to restrict access to it. We want to allow people to open the document but we don’t want them to make any changes to it. How can we get Microsoft Word to do our bidding?

Here are a couple of thoughts:

• It is possible to lock the document with a password so that nobody will be able to open it.
• Additionally, you can also use the password to prevent the document from being changed. It can still be viewed, though. It’s only changes that are stopped.

Password Protecting

To password protect your document:

• Click on the Office button (the glossy orb) and select Save as.
• Sometimes an additional menu will pop up – ignore it if it does. Just click on the Save as button.

Next:

• In the new window that is displayed, click on the Tools button in the bottom left hand corner.
• When the new menu is displayed, select General Options.

We’re really rolling now:

• When the new window appears, enter your password.
• You can choose one of two options for the password: whether it’s required to open or modify the document. The choice is yours.
• When you have entered your password, click OK.
• Type in your password again to confirm it.
• Save the document and it will be password protected from now on.

If you need to remove the password, just repeat the steps outlined above, but instead of entering the password, blank it out.

Password Ptotecting Tips

• Bear in mind that the password protection offered by Microsoft Word is not too strong and can easily be broken. So if you need to email really sensitive documents, consider other encryption options.
• If you decide to use password protect your document against editing, you might also consider exporting it to PDF format. By default, you can’t edit a PDF document.
• The General options window also offers a Read-only recommended option. If this is selected, when the document is opened, the user can choose whether he or she wants to open it in read only only mode or in a mode where changes can be made.

We need to create a numbered list in Microsoft Word that displays only odd or even numbers in it. However, numbered lists do not have this feature incorporated so we will have to get sneaky with Word.

In a nutshell, we are going to create empty lines behind the even numbers and then hide them by changing their colour to white so they can’t be seen on the white background. Here’s how to do it:

Create the numbered list so that your text is entered only on the odd numbers. Each even number is simply a blank line, like this:

It would be so easy if we could just delete the even numbers, but if we did, Word would just resequence the list to include all the numbers again. Booo!

We now need to change the even numbered lines to use white as the font colour. We can select multiple lines by holding down control as we select them. To select a line, move the cursor over to the left margin until you see it turn to the pointy arrow. When you see the pointy arrow, click and that line will be selected. Hold down the ctrl key while you click to selectthe rest of the even lines.

You won’t actually see the numbers themselves selected, but you should see something like this:

With those lines selected, change the font colour to be white by clicking the Home tab > Font Color (in the Font group), and select the white swatch.

When we do this, the even lines disappear. They are still there really, but because they are the same colour as the page, we can’t see them.

The problem with this method is that the odd numbered lines now have a lot of space between them where the “invisible” even numbered lines are. We can tweak that a little by reducing the line spacing. Select the list and click the Line and Paragraph Spacing button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab. Click Line Spacing Options and reduce the Line Spacing value to be something like 0.75.

If you reduce it too much, however, you’ll start to cut the top of each line.