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About this lesson
Password Protect a file or Recover an unsaved version.
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File, Info and Security Considerations.docx58.7 KB
Quick reference
File, Info & 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 give an “Inspect Document” option that clean off the author and editing time from the document record.
The third option is “Manage Versions”. 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 Word 2013 version than ever before.
- 00:04 I'd like to talk to you about file info, there's some good information in here.
- 00:09 So on your file ribbon, go ahead and activate that.
- 00:12 The first option you see, on the left, is Info and
- 00:14 of course the screen right here says Info.
- 00:16 I'll talk about these three buttons in a moment, but
- 00:19 I wanna draw your attention over to the right-hand side.
- 00:22 Looks like a lot of useless information, yes?
- 00:24 No, no, there's a lot of good information here.
- 00:27 Basically, at a glance, it'll tell you what size it is.
- 00:29 Now I don't have to go to my file system to see the size.
- 00:31 It's right here on the screen.
- 00:33 Tells you how many pages, how many words, total editing time.
- 00:37 All this information, the original author, any other author not yet saved.
- 00:42 You can open the file location,
- 00:44 if you want other files to look at in the same area.
- 00:47 It's pretty great, and plus there's an advanced properties button right here,
- 00:51 which will actually show you the document statistics.
- 00:54 Created date, modify date, access date, it's all very interesting information.
- 01:00 The day you need to dig a little deeper into the history of a document.
- 01:05 Okay so not just the contents of a document, but
- 01:07 the history of the creation of the document.
- 01:10 It's all here, under file info and in the properties section.
- 01:14 Okay, now these buttons on the left, first we have the protect document.
- 01:18 When I activate that I can mark it as final so let readers know the document
- 01:22 is final and make it read only no more changes can be made.
- 01:26 Encrypt simply means password protect okay so password protect the document.
- 01:31 I've been advised to make sure you only password protect your own
- 01:34 documents that you own personally that you created personally, but not for
- 01:38 a company you work for.
- 01:40 Generally the company you work for owns the work that you do.
- 01:43 So it would not be okay to password protect documents from your employer.
- 01:48 If you're in a position where you have to do that please write down a password and
- 01:51 make sure your manager knows that you are password protecting that document.
- 01:55 Now Restrict Editing simply controls the types of changes that can be made.
- 01:59 And then a digital signature, if this is going to be officially signed,
- 02:04 you would have to sign up for a service to get a digital signature, and
- 02:08 then of course sign in and sign any document that can be sent over email,
- 02:14 but signed digitally, that's a hard word to say.
- 02:17 All right, the next one is Inspect Document, this is very interesting.
- 02:21 Inspect Document, Check Accessibility, or Compatibility.
- 02:24 I'll go ahead and click the Inspect Document button.
- 02:27 It says before you use this, make sure you save your changes.
- 02:30 Okay, so I'll go ahead and save the changes, and here we go.
- 02:34 It's going to run through all of these items to see if any changes or
- 02:40 any leftover remnants of meta data background data should be removed.
- 02:47 So I'll go ahead and click inspect, it's running through the process.
- 02:51 And there we go it did find something right here.
- 02:53 XML, that simply means internet language.
- 02:56 So I'm gonna go ahead and remove that.
- 02:58 It's not necessary.
- 02:59 It didn't find anything else.
- 03:01 I could hit re-inspect if I want, and run through it again.
- 03:04 Basically, the reason you want to do this is, if you work in a legal office.
- 03:08 Or actually, I learned this from legal secretaries.
- 03:12 No document leaves a lawyer's office with a secretary's name on it.
- 03:16 None at all.
- 03:17 And I don't mean in the content of the document,
- 03:20 I mean on the history of the document.
- 03:23 Because another lawyer's office could see well that wasn't the lawyer who wrote
- 03:26 that, that was the secretary.
- 03:28 So they make sure to inspect it and remove their name and
- 03:31 so that's the easiest way to do that.
- 03:33 So then when we go to File Info it should have just
- 03:37 one person's name not multiple people on here.
- 03:40 Okay?
- 03:40 So that's what the inspection does.
- 03:43 It's pretty great actually.
- 03:45 All right, the next one Manage Document,
- 03:46 this is actually a gift from Microsoft you guys, and it actually works.
- 03:51 So when I click Manage Document recover unsaved documents, when I activate
- 03:55 this section here are all the documents that I have worked on that I didn't save.
- 04:01 Look, they're still available for me.
- 04:03 I can go in one last time and say, 10:17 AM?
- 04:06 I didn't realize I didn't save that.
- 04:08 I better keep that one.
- 04:10 This is a great area, I love this feature.
- 04:12 It is, again, a gift from Microsoft because it actually works.
- 04:16 So if you forgot to save a document, you can get it back under file info,
- 04:21 right down here, manage document, recover unsaved.
- 04:25 Now, there is a caveat to this as well.
- 04:27 You must have had the document open for at least 10 minutes.
- 04:32 Every 10 minutes the computer does an auto-save, and
- 04:34 that is why it gets saved into that one area.
- 04:38 Alright, please use these features.
- 04:40 It's great to just be aware that they even exist in there.
- 04:42 Thank you.
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