MS Word document protection flaw

[Guest]

I don't see the value in protecting a document if you can just copy and paste
the text into a new file and then edit it without any problem.

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...c1743d&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Charles Kenyon]

The idea is to protect _that_ computer file. There are other kinds of
protection available including protection for form where copy is not
enabled, however, they are all easy to circumvent. The general rule is that
if someone can see the document, they can copy it to a different document
and make changes. All you can do is make it somewhat more or less difficult
to do this.

--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?cHJvcG1hc3Rlcg==?=,

I don't see the value in protecting a document if you can just copy and paste
the text into a new file and then edit it without any problem.

In Word 2003 IRM (Rights Management) was introduced. It requires access to a
Rights Management Server (such as Windows 2003), but once you have it, you can
protect a document so that the text can't be selected, or copied, or printed...
Whatever you choose.

The other types of document protection (such as for forms, comments, track
changes) are for convenience, only, to prevent users from accidentally doing
something they shouldn't.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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