Protecting Embedded Objects

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A colleague is creating a summary document in Word 2003 that has text and embedded Word and PDF files, so that viewers can click an embedded object to view it. She’s embedding the files rather than linking to them, since not all viewers will have access rights to some of the file locations. She would like to protect the embedded objects so they can not be deleted. As I understand it, when she protects the document, the embedded objects no longer open. Any thoughts?

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I don’t think there’s a satisfactory solution for that – if a user inadvertently deletes an embedded object, they should close the document without saving it.

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Thanks, Hans. I’m recommending marking the document property as Read Only, in the faint hope that an unknowledgeable person won’t uncheck that Properties box.

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Why not add a macro button to the template that saves the embedded items to the user’s profile (say userMy Documents). Tell the user to click the button, then the embedded items will be external to the document and linked to by a relative link in the document. There should then be no issue with opening the items.

Alternatively put the whole bundle into a zipfile and extract that to a fixed location, same issue but this time the document can’t be amended.

If the access is via server (as it seems) why not put the word document (and the embedded items) into read only with user privileges restricted? If amendments are prohibited, it seems appropriate to have the entire document propagated to a read-only server space. It’s difficult to know what is intended from what you have said.

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Hi Paul,

The problem with your first suggestion is that it requires the user to enable macros and still doesn’t prevent them from deleting the objects from the document. It also adds a copy of the embedded objects to their local folder, which may be undesirable.

Similarly, zipping the file doesn’t prevent it being changed and AFAIK you can’t force users to unzip it to a fixed location.

The simplest solution is to mark the fiel as ‘read only’, via Windows Explorer. That way, the user doesn’t have to respond to an ‘open as Read Only’ prompt and saving changes to the original file is prevented.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Macropod,

On the first point, agreed, my bad.

Re; the second, I was thinking (though not clearly explaining) that I had in mind a self extracting Zip, not with a fixed location, but extracting the whole file to one location, so that relative links would be workable. However, I acknowledge the point about inability to prevent changes to the document. The idea was a read only zip. Agreed not an elegant solution.

The third solution works, I agree. However, if read only is the way forward, why not add the attachments to read only space?

Another way might be to have it as a read only template, but then when opened it can be amended without affecting the template? There is then no issue with deletion/amendment.

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Hi Paul,

if read only is the way forward, why not add the attachments to read only space?

It isn’t the only way forward, but adding the attachments to read only space still doesn’t prevent the links to that space being deleted from the document (which has the same end-user result as deleting the objects themselves) and is unlikely to work once you send the file to someone (eg an external client) who doesn’t have access to the intranet on which the linked files are stored.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Paul,
It isn’t the only way forward, but adding the attachments to read only space still doesn’t prevent the links to that space being deleted from the document (which has the same end-user result as deleting the objects themselves) and is unlikely to work once you send the file to someone (eg an external client) who doesn’t have access to the intranet on which the linked files are stored.

Agreed. Thank you.

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Thanks Paul and Macropod. The user is satisfied with the Read Only solution, so we can close this thread.

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