Microsoft Office 2010 has really simplified the process to password protect and encrypt documents.  This is a nice improvement over password protecting documents under Office 2007.  Anyway, the new process for Office 2010 is consistent across the core Office product line (Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010 etc.) so I’ll demonstrate the process just once using Microsoft Word 2010.

 

 

How To Protect A Word 2010 Document Using Built-in Password Encryption

 

1.  Click the File tab, then Click Info.  On the menu to the right Click Protect Document and

Click Encrypt with Password.

 

2.  The Encrypt Document dialog will appear, Type in a password and then Click OK to finish.

 

Please note – It’s very important to use a STRONG Password or Pass Phrase in step #2.  Yeah yeah… you don’t need to get crazy here with wild $ymb0ls and upper and lower case characters you will forget in 10 minutes however, using a simple dictionary word will allow anyone with a $100 password cracking app to gain access to your document.  Using a long PASS PHRASE (IE: my house is yellow) however with 10 or more characters will significantly increase the encryption strength of the document and decrease the likelihood someone will be able to break the encryption and gain access to your document.

 

 

After choosing a password, your document should be protected!

If you’re looking to password protect your document for sharing purposes (Set a Password to Open or Password to Modify option) you will have to use the OLD Password Protection dialog used with previous versions of Office.  For that step-by-step, take a look at this article I wrote for Office 2007.

Tags: encryption, excel 2010, how-to, Microsoft, microsoft office, powerpoint 2010, privacy, Security, word 2010