[dandeliondream]

Hi,

1) I'm wondering if I can save a word document as non-editable? I want to
prevent others from copying my text.

2) Is it possible to place a watermark over the text?

[Graham Mayor]

It is impossible to prevent anyone you allow to view your text from copying
it. You can merely make it more difficult. Yes you can add watermarks to
your document. A watermark is simply a graphical image placed behind the
text. For it to be of any use, you need to save the word document as a
graphical image, or series of images (SnagIt will do that) then save the
resulting graphic(s) as a PDF. It will not stop the really determined from
copying, but it will make it difficult to do so.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




"dandeliondream" wrote in message
...
Hi,

1) I'm wondering if I can save a word document as non-editable? I want to
prevent others from copying my text.

2) Is it possible to place a watermark over the text?

[Graham Mayor]

It is impossible to prevent anyone you allow to view your text from copying
it. You can merely make it more difficult. Yes you can add watermarks to
your document. A watermark is simply a graphical image placed behind the
text. For it to be of any use, you need to save the word document as a
graphical image, or series of images (SnagIt will do that) then save the
resulting graphic(s) as a PDF. It will not stop the really determined from
copying, but it will make it difficult to do so.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org




"dandeliondream" wrote in message
...
Hi,

1) I'm wondering if I can save a word document as non-editable? I want to
prevent others from copying my text.

2) Is it possible to place a watermark over the text?

[Ian Rastall]

On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 08:13:50 +0200, "Graham Mayor"
wrote:

For it to be of any use, you need to save the word document as a
graphical image, or series of images (SnagIt will do that) then save the
resulting graphic(s) as a PDF. It will not stop the really determined from
copying, but it will make it difficult to do so.

It will also increase the file size drastically, although you could
keep it lower by compressing the images. That could make the file hard
to read, however.

Ian

[Ian Rastall]

On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 08:13:50 +0200, "Graham Mayor"
wrote:

For it to be of any use, you need to save the word document as a
graphical image, or series of images (SnagIt will do that) then save the
resulting graphic(s) as a PDF. It will not stop the really determined from
copying, but it will make it difficult to do so.

It will also increase the file size drastically, although you could
keep it lower by compressing the images. That could make the file hard
to read, however.

Ian

[Ian Rastall]

On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:53:45 -0500, Ian Rastall
wrote:

It will also increase the file size drastically, although you could
keep it lower by compressing the images. That could make the file hard
to read, however.

Sorry to respond to my own post. If someone had a copy of Adobe
Acrobat, they could use the built-in optical character recognition to
create a text file from the images in the PDF. Again, compression
makes that harder, by making the text more pixelated, but pixelated
text is a drag.

Ian

[Ian Rastall]

On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:53:45 -0500, Ian Rastall
wrote:

It will also increase the file size drastically, although you could
keep it lower by compressing the images. That could make the file hard
to read, however.

Sorry to respond to my own post. If someone had a copy of Adobe
Acrobat, they could use the built-in optical character recognition to
create a text file from the images in the PDF. Again, compression
makes that harder, by making the text more pixelated, but pixelated
text is a drag.

Ian