Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life before
you share an important document with
someone else there are a couple of
things you can do to finalize and
protect it you'll find everything you
need in the backstage view the inspect
document feature will let you remove any
hidden personal information that's
stored in the file it will also check
for document elements that you generally
don't want in a final draft for example
track changes that you forgot to accept
or reject some of the changes from the
inspector can't be undone so it's a good
idea to save an extra copy before you
continue when you're ready go ahead and
click check for issues choose inspect
document from the menu then click
inspect in the dialog box
the results will appear with an
exclamation mark next to anything that
may contain sensitive information in
this example it looks like there are
some hidden document properties and
personal info and also some comments
that I forgot to delete which can happen
when markup for track changes is turned
off I definitely don't want these things
in the final draft so I'm going to take
this opportunity to remove them just
click the button to the right that says
remove all and word will erase the data
instantly I'm also going to remove the
personal information the inspector found
because the people I'm sharing with just
don't really need access to that and
when you're done click the close button
now that our document has been finalized
we can protect it to prevent people from
making any further changes this step is
optional but it's a great way to control
who's allowed to view or edit your work
all you have to do is click the protect
document command and make a selection
from the menu some of these options
offer a high level of protection such as
encrypt with password which is good for
really important or sensitive documents
if you don't need that much security
though you might want to consider one of
the other options in this case I'm going
to choose mark as Final which will make
the document read-only this will
discourage people from making any more
changes to the file and also let them
know that this is the final draft once
you make your selection click OK to
confirm
then okay again and the setting will be
applied
now when anyone opens the file they'll
see this little bar at the top of the
window and they won't be able to type or
delete anything now if they do need to
make changes they can just click the
button that says edit anyway so ensure
this option doesn't provide any actual
security for your document but it's a
good way to keep people from changing or
deleting something by accident okay
so now you know some ways to finalize
and protect your documents before
sending them out to others
you