preventing distribution of a document

[Khardy3352]

Is it possible to protect a document in a way that it prevents distribution
via email or print? I have the document with a "double-level" password
protection, meaning the first password opens the document for read only, then
to open it for editing requires a second password; but this would not prevent
it from being emailed once opened, saved to a different location or printed
and distributed. Is there anyway to prevent unauthorized such distribution by
a user?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No. Anything that can be seen can be copied. You can make it more difficult
but not impossible. You can also make it "tamper-evident" but not
tamper-proof.

 

[Terry Farrell]

As Suzanne says. Once it is on screen, anything can be done with it.

If it is going to be sent to several people, you could make a tiny
difference to each copy you send out and then if it does become 'public
domain', you should be able to determine the source of the leak.

 

[reitanospa1]

One trick you can try is to select your text, use edit/cut, use edit/
paste special, and select one of the picture options. This will put
your text in the document as an image, so they will be unable to edit
it. Note that they could always use OCR to convert it to text (just as
they could with a pdf!) if they were desperate to get your
information.

Note also, that you would have to do this paste special with each page
because of the way Word paginates with images.

 

[Stefan Blom]

What you are suggesting might make editing the data a bit more difficult,
but, as you noted, not at all impossible. I think Terry's suggestion is
clever, though.