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About this lesson
Password Protect a file or Recover an unsaved version.
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Exercise files
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File, Info and Security Considerations.docx57.2 KB
Quick reference
File, Info and Security Considerations
The “File, Info” options allow you to find author information about the document, password protect a document, and recover any unsaved versions that you may want to retrieve.
When to use
This feature is often overlooked but when it is needed, it is invaluable. When you just need to work on the technical file attributes, rather than the text and formats, you would use the File, Info screen.
Instructions
1. On an existing document, Click FILE, INFO.
a. The first option is “Protect Document”, which allows you to add a password to a document. Keep in mind, this is optional and should only be done with your personal documents on your own private computer. Employers own the work you do while on the job, therefore to password a work file would be prohibitive as employees move positions.
b. The second option is “Check for Issues”. This feature checks to make sure the file is compatible (if necessary) to older versions of Word. It also gives an “Inspect Document” option that cleans off the author name and editing time from the document's record.
c. The third option is “Manage Document”. This feature is a rescue if you closed a document and forgot to save changes. It is not foolproof, but it has been more reliable in the recent Word versions than ever before.
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- 00:04 There's one more big area inside the File ribbon to check out and that is File Info.
- 00:10 In fact, when you hit the File ribbon, it lands on Info, but check this out.
- 00:14 This whole screen there, Protect Document, Inspect, Manage Document right over here.
- 00:20 Look at this list right over here, the Properties tells you the size of
- 00:23 the document, so I don't have to go into my file system to see how big it is.
- 00:27 I can just hit file and there it is.
- 00:29 How many pages, how many words, how much editing time.
- 00:32 I can add titles, tags, comments to this.
- 00:34 It'll even show me who the authors are in this, and
- 00:37 I can add a new author if I wanna like co-write something with someone.
- 00:41 And I can open up the file location or I can show all properties.
- 00:45 I'm gonna go ahead and click Show All Properties and
- 00:48 the list just lengthened a little more.
- 00:51 Right up here, the Properties button advanced.
- 00:53 Check this out.
- 00:54 When you go into the Advanced Properties,
- 00:57 these shows you all the document statistics.
- 00:59 Shows you the created date, modified, accessed, printed, saved device,
- 01:03 some one and shows you all the other statistics in here.
- 01:06 Of course, you can go ahead and click around in here.
- 01:09 Got all kinds of information.
- 01:11 It's just interesting to see how much you can add to or
- 01:15 just find out about a particular document.
- 01:18 I'm going to go ahead and hit Cancel on that.
- 01:20 And let's keep focusing on the file Info section right over here Protect Document.
- 01:25 Now, what does that mean?
- 01:26 That means of course password protected.
- 01:29 So, first of all, I can make this a read only document which means
- 01:33 you can only read it, you can't edit this thing, it prevents accidental changes.
- 01:38 Let see, I can encrypt with a password,
- 01:40 that really means you're going to password protect this.
- 01:43 So, next time you try to open it, you have to enter that password.
- 01:46 Now, please keep in mind, if this is your own personal home and
- 01:49 your own personal work, go ahead and password protect all you want, but
- 01:51 if you work for someone else.
- 01:53 They happen to own the work you do for their company and
- 01:56 I would not recommend password your file unless you have their permission.
- 02:00 And your supervisor knows in the password is written down
- 02:02 somewhere in case something happens to you.
- 02:04 They still need access to that file.
- 02:07 We can restrict editing we can add a digital signature.
- 02:09 That's more on a governmental level.
- 02:11 We can mark this as final let all the readers know the document is final
- 02:15 no more changes allowed.
- 02:17 Let's go on to the next one check for issues.
- 02:19 This is great as well, because we can inspect we can do something called inspect
- 02:24 document now before gives us a little heads up, make sure you save your changes.
- 02:29 That's fine, I'm going to go ahead and hit Yes right away.
- 02:32 And it's going to look for comments, it's going to clean all this off of there so
- 02:36 this is going to leave and travel to someone else's computer.
- 02:40 I might not want some background notes.
- 02:43 Every file you create has whats called meta data in it in the background and
- 02:48 that travels with it.
- 02:49 So we're going to actually get rid of all this even ink if there is any notes or
- 02:52 comments I've written they are all going to be gone.
- 02:55 We're going to inspect all of this, it's a short document, look here,
- 02:59 it found something.
- 03:01 Remove personal information, absolutely,
- 03:03 I'm going to remove my personal information out of there.
- 03:06 So let see headers and footers, watermarks, I'll go ahead and
- 03:09 remove those.
- 03:10 I don't think there was anything in there.
- 03:12 XML data, that means Internet bubble meta data, I'm going to remove that as well.
- 03:17 Now, if you weren't sure about all of those, I'd have you go about to Google and
- 03:21 make sure you wanted all those gone.
- 03:23 But right now, completely clean of any of my fingerprints.
- 03:26 And I can send this off to whoever needs to have it.
- 03:30 Let's go right back to File.
- 03:32 And it, of course, defaults to Info.
- 03:34 Now this very bottom one is my favorite by far.
- 03:36 It is Manage Document.
- 03:38 This is how you recover unsaved documents.
- 03:41 And there's a caveat here that file had to have been open at least 10 minutes
- 03:45 in order for the computer to do an auto save stamp.
- 03:48 So I'll hit that.
- 03:49 And here's all the files that I've had opened today
- 03:52 that I didn't bother saving for whatever reason.
- 03:55 I can get them back, right now.
- 03:57 I could click on this one right here and retrieve it.
- 04:00 Now sometimes I come in here and this is completely empty,
- 04:02 but today I got lucky and there were some in here.
- 04:05 This is wonderful, this is a gift from Microsoft, they
- 04:08 allow us to retrieve unsaved files and it saves us a lot of heartache sometimes.
- 04:12 All right, that's it I just wanted to show you that the file Info
- 04:16 is an incredibly useful, useful area.
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