Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
before you share an important document
with colleagues or clients there are a
couple things you can do to finalize and
protect it you'll find everything you
need in the backstage view under protect
document and inspect document inspect
document will let you remove any hidden
personal information that's stored in
the file itself it'll also check for
document elements that you generally
don't want in the final draft for
example tracked 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 a 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's some hidden document
properties and personal info and also
some comments that I forgot to delete
which can happen when markup is turned
off I definitely don't want these 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 the
document with don't really need access
to it
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 note that this is the final
draft once you make your selection click
OK to confirm then ok again and the
protection will be applied now when
somebody 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 if they do need to make changes
they can click the button that says edit
anyway in short this option doesn't
provide any actual security for your
document however it's a good way to keep
people from changing or deleting
something by accident now you know how
to finalize and protect your documents
using the features in the backstage view
you