Fred's Safety Belt
~~ Fred Arshoff

PASSWORD PROTECTING A DOCUMENT

There are different reasons you may wish to password protect a document you made. The information may be private or you don’t want anything to be modified.

In most applications you can password protect a document two ways: for opening or modifying. Before proceeding to tell you how to password protect and the difference between the two types, I want you to  remember that like all Windows based passwords they are case sensitive, thus if you used a capital letter and tried to use a lower case letter to open the document, it won’t open.

TYPES OF DOCUMENT PROTECTION

1. Password to open a document.   With this type of password, if not entered correctly, you won’t get the document to open. As with all other passwords, it is case sensitive. To set this option in your document, you click on save and click on options. Then, you will be given a choice of things. Go to PASSWORD TO OPEN, or something that has the same meaning, as each application may be worded slightly differently.

2. Password to modify a document.  With this option, a person can open the document, but not be able to edit it. Thus, they can’t change anything you wrote, but can read the entire document. This password, like all others, is case sensitive. To use this type of password, click on SAVE AS OPTIONS, and go to the box TO MODIFY, or something that has the same meaning. Again, each application may be worded slightly differently.

3. Some programs offer ways to password protect only certain parts of a document so some parts can be edited and others can’t.  An example of a program that can do this is Microsoft Excel.  In Office XP (2002) you can also encrypt and have a digital signature to protect your document. We haven’t found out if the same applies to WP 2002.

TIP FOR WORDPERFECT USERS: 

Starting with WordPerfect 7 there is enhanced password protection.  This allows your passwords to be case sensitive, thus offering you more security. The drawback to this is, if a person is using any version earlier then WordPerfect 7 they won’t be able to open the document.

WHAT PASSWORDS DO AND DON’T DO

A password will not protect you from getting a virus on your computer or important document. Also, if a document is password protected, people still can copy the document to a floppy disk and try at their leisure to crack the password and read your document.

In conclusion, a password does give you some protection, but not ultimate protection. So, if your house door was left open, someone very easily can still steal your computer and have as long as they need to crack the password. Also, a password-protected document still can be carried away on a floppy disk; the same document can still get a virus.  Passwords only offer so much protection. You have to use as much security as possible to protect your computer and data from others.

WHAT SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A PASSWORD

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT be your name.

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT be your social security number.

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT be your birthday.

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT be your drivers license number.

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT spell a word.

The PASSWORD SHOULD NOT be written on paper and left somewhere where it can be found.

The PASSWORD SHOULD contain at least 1 special character (example: “!”).

The PASSWORD SHOULD contain at least 1 capital letter.

THE PASSWORD SHOULD be changed at least every 3 months.

The PASSWORD SHOULD contain at least 6 to 8 characters.

Make SURE the password makes sense to no one (your best friend today can be your enemy tomorrow).

Fred Arshoff is self employed in the computer industry where his favorite thing is troubleshooting security and virus issues.  He runs two Yahoo groups:  Fred's Findings and Fred's Virus Info.