Andre said:
Is there any possibility to send a word document (e.g. an invoice)
which cannot be changed by the receiving parties. Do I need a PDF
conversion? Thanks for any advise
This is one of the most frequent of the Frequently Asked Questions.
Any document, electronic or paper, that you allow others to have can be
altered. Depending on how it's created, it may take more or less effort to
do so, and the alteration may or may not be easily detectable.
There is no way to prevent a Word document in its electronic form from being
altered. You can apply a digital signature to the document, and Word will
automatically remove the signature if the file is changed by even one byte.
Note that this does _not_ prevent changes, it only makes it possible to say
that a file is not the same as the original. A printout of an altered
document will look perfect, if the alteration is done with care.
If you use the full version of Adobe Acrobat to make a PDF file from your
document, you can make it more difficult -- but not impossible -- for
someone to make an altered copy. Most of the cheap or free PDF creation
programs don't offer the kind of change control that Acrobat does.
If the document is something of considerable legal or financial value, be
aware that anything that is (or can be) printed on paper can then be scanned
and altered in a way that's almost undetectable, unless you want to pay for
a forensic examination of the paper and ink.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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Graham simply asked a quite valid