Office/Word not a good tool for read-only emailed docs?

[Kim Finleyson]

Just an FYI -- PDF conversion does not necessarily cost $299. Check out
www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp -- It's free, and it works great
with Office applications. As for the rest of that discussion, check
http://www.pdfzone.com, especially the articles discussing Microsoft and PDF
http://www.pdfzone.com/news/675-PDFzone_news.html and
http://www.pdfzone.com/news/1137-PDFzone_news.html.

And as for Microsoft, the fact is many, MANY companies use Word + PDF.
Microsoft openly acknowledges the value of PDFs:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;212318 It used to
be only Adobe had ownership of PDF but now lots of third-party tools are
available, lots with security features and so forth -- see
http://www.PDFZone.com As for Word and PDF, they both serve useful
purposes...They work great together. Read more about this subject, and what
each tool does, and it will be clear that this entire argument is a bit
unfounded.

 

[Jay Freedman]

[snip]

Actually, the functionality I want is available for NON-FORM documents
by including a non-editable form field and then protecting the form.
The problem is that I want that kind of protection for FORMS. What
good would sending a "protected" invoice doc with editable form
fields be?! Is there a way to get the functionality? Is this a
bug/oversight in Word?

Tony

Yes, there is a way to get the functionality, with a bit of VBA code in the
template. This assumes that you've finished filling in the fields and never
want to treat them as fields again, after you get the document back from
wherever you sent it.

Manually, what you would do is unprotect the document, select all (or
individual form fields), unlink the fields (Ctrl+Shift+F9), and reprotect
the document with a password. Since there are no longer any form fields, the
document can't be edited unless you have the password or use the Insert >
File trick that Suzanne described.

A macro is far preferable for three reasons: (1) if you assign a toolbar
button to the macro, you get one-button convenience; (2) due to a design
snafu, reprotecting the document through the dialog clears all the form
fields, so that bit has to be done with VBA anyway; (3) with VBA you can
unlink only the form fields but leave other fields (dates, page numbers,
etc.) untouched.

Here's a macro that does the basic steps (it could be embroidered a bit);

Public Sub SecureDocument()
Dim oFld As Field
Dim Pwd As String, Pwd2 As String

With ActiveDocument
If .ProtectionType <> wdNoProtection Then
.Unprotect
End If

For Each oFld In ActiveDocument.Fields
With oFld
If (.Type = wdFieldFormCheckBox) Or _
(.Type = wdFieldFormDropDown) Or _
(.Type = wdFieldFormTextInput) Then
oFld.Unlink
End If
End With
Next oFld

Pwd = InputBox$(Prompt:="Enter password", _
Title:="Protection Password", _
Default:="PassWord")

If Len(Pwd) > 0 Then
Do
Pwd2 = InputBox$( _
Prompt:="Re-enter password", _
Title:="Password Verification")
Loop Until (Pwd2 = Pwd) Or (Pwd2 = "")

If Pwd2 = Pwd Then
.Protect Type:=wdAllowOnlyFormFields, _
Noreset:=True, Password:=Pwd
Else
MsgBox "Protection canceled"
End If
Else ' no password
.Protect Type:=wdAllowOnlyFormFields, _
Noreset:=True
End If
End With
End Sub

 

[Chad DeMeyer]

No method of document protection is foolproof, but it seems to me your
primary goal is to prevent the document from being changed without you being
aware of it. If that is the case, you could Protect for Tracked Changes
rather than Protect For Forms. And to be extra confident, you could run the
Document Compare function against the original when you get the file back
from your vendor. It will detect if so much as a comma has been changed.

Regards,
Chad DeMeyer

 

[Charles Kenyon]

With Suzanne's warning, it would be easy to have a macro in your form that
disables all the form fields. You could use it on a copy before sending the
form to others.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Word was designed to produce paper documents on a computer, not to produce
electronic "documents."

 

[Charles Kenyon]

I use CutePDF which is free and downloadable. It does _not_ have all of the
options and flexibility of the full Acrobat program, but it does produce
good .pdf files from Word or any other application I've tried it with.

[Acrobat is] Not at all [a word processor]. It is basically a printer driver.
According to Ted Padova's "Adobe Acrobat 6 PDF Bible" [...]

A $299 print driver! One that takes a paper-centric document and creates an
"electronic document" fits the title much better than Word document
apparently ever will.

Apparently the product most people probably need is Acrobat Elements to
convert Word docs to pdf from within Word with one click without all the
bells and whistles of the full Acrobat product. Unfortunately, Adobe won't
sell Elements to the common man as it's only available in 1000+ seat
licenses to "enterprises". Woe is me and boo on the Adobe capitalist.

Tony

 

[tony]

Hi Tony

[snip]

Actually, the functionality I want is available for NON-FORM documents
by including a non-editable form field and then protecting the form.
The problem is that I want that kind of protection for FORMS. What
good would sending a "protected" invoice doc with editable form
fields be?! Is there a way to get the functionality? Is this a
bug/oversight in Word?

Tony

Yes, there is a way to get the functionality, with a bit of VBA code in the
template. This assumes that you've finished filling in the fields and never
want to treat them as fields again, after you get the document back from
wherever you sent it.

Manually, what you would do is unprotect the document, select all (or
individual form fields), unlink the fields (Ctrl+Shift+F9), and reprotect
the document with a password. Since there are no longer any form fields, the
document can't be edited unless you have the password or use the Insert >
File trick that Suzanne described.

A macro is far preferable for three reasons: (1) if you assign a toolbar
button to the macro, you get one-button convenience; (2) due to a design
snafu, reprotecting the document through the dialog clears all the form
fields, so that bit has to be done with VBA anyway; (3) with VBA you can
unlink only the form fields but leave other fields (dates, page numbers,
etc.) untouched.

Here's a macro that does the basic steps (it could be embroidered a bit);

[macro was here]

Thanks Jay. Yes, that will solve that problem then, though it would be my first
excursion into VBA. I'm kinda leaning toward conversion to .pdf at this point to
get the small file size for emailing though.

Tony

 

[tony]

With Suzanne's warning, it would be easy to have a macro in your form that
disables all the form fields. You could use it on a copy before sending the
form to others.

Yes, Jay kindly provided a macro to do just that. I'm leaning toward
conversion to .pdf to get small file sizes also, for emailing.

Tony

 

[tony]

Word was designed to produce paper documents on a computer, not to produce
electronic "documents."

Yes, as I've discovered!

 

[tony]

I use CutePDF which is free and downloadable. It does _not_ have all of the
options and flexibility of the full Acrobat program, but it does produce
good .pdf files from Word or any other application I've tried it with.

OK, I'll check it out. I've setup a postscript printer and used Ghostscript
to convert to .pdf, but Ghostscript doesn't allow setting edit/copy/print
protections. The commercial Scansoft PDF Create product is on my
short list also.

Tony

 

[tony]

Just an FYI -- PDF conversion does not necessarily cost $299. Check out
www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp -- It's free, and it works great

OK, that one has 2 votes now.

with Office applications. As for the rest of that discussion, check
http://www.pdfzone.com, especially the articles discussing Microsoft and PDF
http://www.pdfzone.com/news/675-PDFzone_news.html and
http://www.pdfzone.com/news/1137-PDFzone_news.html.

And as for Microsoft, the fact is many, MANY companies use Word + PDF.
Microsoft openly acknowledges the value of PDFs:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;212318 It used to
be only Adobe had ownership of PDF but now lots of third-party tools are
available, lots with security features and so forth -- see
http://www.PDFZone.com As for Word and PDF, they both serve useful
purposes...They work great together. Read more about this subject, and what
each tool does, and it will be clear that this entire argument is a bit
unfounded.

What argument? The value of read-only documents?

It just seems odd that the end portion a of a document's lifecycle (the actual
usage) is not supported well in Word. With all the "embrace and extend"
that MS does elsewhere, I'm surprised that they haven't incorporated the
technology (or similar) into their product since it is a part of many, many
document processes in this age of internet communications especially.
Odd.

Tony

 

[tony]

No method of document protection is foolproof, but it seems to me your
primary goal is to prevent the document from being changed without you being
aware of it. If that is the case, you could Protect for Tracked Changes
rather than Protect For Forms. And to be extra confident, you could run the
Document Compare function against the original when you get the file back
from your vendor. It will detect if so much as a comma has been changed.

Well, we're not doing the "digital signing" thing. Mostly the doc goes over the
wire just for acceptance. The actual signing happens in person on a printed
version. Still it seems unprofessional to send the docs with any editable or
copyable portions.

Tony

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word: file sizes too large for email transmission.

Word: Form processing and protection weak.

FWIW, I find that documents with much formatting in them usually result in
PDFs that are larger than the .doc files.

 

[tony]

FWIW, I find that documents with much formatting in them usually result in
PDFs that are larger than the .doc files.

With IRM and the ability to support a browser for those not having Office 2003,
my file was 330 KB. As a PDF, it became 36 KB. The .dot template from which
the document began was 140 KB.

Tony