Microsoft Office 2010 includes some very good features that simplify the tasks we want to do with our documents. One of the most sought after feature in all programs of Microsoft Office including Word, Excel and PowerPoint is password protecting the document so that only the people who have the password will be able to access the contents inside the document. This document encryption feature is built into Microsoft Office 2010.
Microsoft Office 2010 includes features to easily restrict access to sensitive documents. Let us setup a step by step tutorial on how to password protect any Office document including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Open any Office program. I will use Microsoft Word 2010 for this tutorial.
- Open the file you want to password protect and then the file menu on the top left.
- Go to Info –> Expand Protect Document by clicking on it in Permissions.
- Select Encrypt with Password.
- This will open a dialog box with the password field. Type your desirable password and press OK.
Please note that the passwords are case sensitive and there is easy way to recover the document if you forget the encryption password. You may want to save your passwords in a password manager.
Your document is now password protected. Nobody will be able to access the contents of the document unless he or she has the right password.
