Control who can edit

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Hi all, and as usual thanks in advance. The “lounge” in its many incarnations has been a great help to people like me, who know just enough to be dangerous. With the recent changes, now an addition to the Windows Secrets Family, things will not only continue to be great, they will likely become even more fantastic. Now on to my question….

I have searched the forum, though maybe not on the correct terms and couldn’t really find anything so…..

Is there an easy way in Word to control who can edit a document if it is on a shared drive, such that only one individual can actually make changes to the document. To me this would be similar to the “protect sheet, etc. capabilities in Excel. I know you can mark a document “final”, but that doesn’t prevent someone from going in and making changes. This is a work environment where numerous people will be able to access the documents, but we only want one person to actually be able to make edits, if that makes sense.

All the best to everyone for the Holiday Season, and best wishes for a Prosperous New Year.

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For Word 97-2003:
– Select Tools | Options…
– Activate the Security tab.
– Enter a password in the “Password to modify” box.
– Click OK. You’ll be asked to enter the password again.
– Close and save the document.

For Word 2007:
– Click the Office button.
– Click Save As.
– In the Save as dialog, click Tools and select General Options.
– Enter a password in the “Password to modify” box.
– Click OK. You’ll be asked to enter the password again.
– Click Save.

Next time the document is opened, the user will be prompted to enter the password to modify the document, or to open the document read-only.

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There are a number of different solutions, depending on what version of Word you are using and what kind of environment this is.

Simplest might be to use Windows file permissions to prevent unauthorized people from saving a new version in the shared folder.

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I’m with StuartR,

I think your best solution is outside of Word. Since you are dealing with a shared network drive, control access through the network. Allow everyone to have read-only access, and allow only one person/group to have read/update/create access.

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I think Slinky gave you the answer that is most likely to meet your needs. Beyond that, you should be aware that Word generally locks the file for exclusive write access when the first user opens it, unless that user opens it in Read Only mode. Subsequent users are notified that the file has been opened by another user, and offers two options.

1) Open it in Read ONly mode.

2) Notify me when the other user saves and closes.

Amazingly, the notification actually works if you still have Word open (working on another document, perhaps) when the other user closes.

Beyond that, there are a couple of other features that you would do well to investigate if two or more people are working on the same document.

The most important of these, Track Changes, works even if some of the authors are outside your office. It uses the personal information that you enter on first use of Microsoft Word, along with other things, probably including the product key of the program being used to edit the document, to tag each change. Changes are color coded, and absolutely everything is tagged, down to addition or deletion of punctuation marks. Using the Reviewing toolbar, the person who is finally responsible for the document can review, accept, and reject changes made by others. Rejected changes disappear from the final document, while accepted changes are merged into it.

The other cool feature, most applicable to documents that leave the office and return with revisions, is the option to merge changes from the returning document into your master. This can be done in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook, by selecting the “send for review” option from among the Send Mail options within Word. However, you don’t need to use this feature in order to take advantage of this document merger feature. So long as the document name is unchanged, Word can recognize it as a copy from offsite.

Beyond these options, ron007 vaguely referred to solutions “outside of Word.” I suspect that he was referring to document management systems such as Lotus Notes. These are big, complex systems, which might be overkill for a handful of documents. Nevertheless, they are useful if you have a large library of documents to control, because they operate along the lines of a real library, where documents are checked out, updated, and checked back into the library/repository. These systems also handle such matters as version control, and are, therefore, commonly used in such environments as ISO 9002 certified record keeping systems.

David A. Gray

Designing for the Ages, One Challenge at a Time

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