ms word: template protection

[pickwick]

I have recently created a series of templates in word, and password protected them. Should this password protection feed through to any docs that are created using this template? ... I am sure that when I have done this before, the new document loses all the protection... but with the templates I have just created, you can't edit the docs created unless you have the password.

Is there a better way to protect templates than password protection? ...so that the docs don't contain any protection, but the templates can't be corrupted??

thx
p
PS I'm using word 2003 on XP OS

 

[jimr381]

Welcome to the forum.

Are you trying to protect the layout of the documents, people getting into the documents or soemthing else? Can you upload the template so we can take a look at it? You will have to zip the file up before posting it.

 

[Rollin_Again]

Are these true templates with the extension .dot or just regular .doc files with password protection? If you save the file as a true template (.dot) the original file will be preserved when the user attempts to save it since it automatically changes the save as type to .doc

The only way the original will get overwritten is if the user manually changes the file save as type back to .dot
The average user is very unlikely to do this.

Regards,
Rollin

 

[pickwick]

thanks guys...
the template is a .dot file and the zipped version is 650 meg, so I can't upload (even stripped down to bare minimum it's huge)... It's a translation to Word of an InDesign file (why, I hear you ask?!) and it's complex as far as word docs go. Two unequal columns, text boxes and drawing elements in the headers and footers, section breaks and column breaks ... lots of formatting that could go wrong.

i wanted to password protect it to prevent accidental changes, but maybe having it as a template will be enough. I am not convinced that the users will set it up as a proper template though. I suspect it will just be used as a word doc that gets 'saved as ...'. Maybe read-only is an option? Let me know if you have any other suggestions!

Cheers
P

 

[Cyps]

If you want it to be 100% read only then why not convert it to a PDF file using one of the free PDF convertors. Anyone will then be able to view it with the ubiquitous and free Adobe reader.