LAN Tips, Protecting Shared Documents (1)

This section heading might seem like an oxymoron. I mean, if you want to protect a document and keep it private, why would you share it in the first place? Answer: Perhaps you occasionally work at other computers in the LAN and want to access some of your documents at other computers. You just don’t want anyone else to have access to the document from a shared computer.

The simplest way to do this is to password-protect the document as you save it to a shared folder. The exact technique for password-protecting a shared document varies from one program to the next. I cannot even say for certain that all programs will support it.

Using Microsoft Excel as an example, however, let’s say you’re about to save a worksheet that you want to access from other computers in the LAN, but keep other people out of it. Choose File → Save As and then choose Shared Documents from the Save in drop-down list to make the file’s icon available from all computers in the LAN. Prior to clicking that Save button, however, click Tools in the Save As dialog box and choose General Options.

To prevent others from opening the file, enter a password for Password to open. Needless to say, you don’t want to forget this password or you won’t be able to open the document yourself — ever! Use the same password for every document. If you start making them up on a document-by-document basis — trust me on this — you’ll wish you hadn’t. (The voice of experience here.) Click OK and then click Save to save the document.

Other users can see the document’s icon. When they attempt to open the document, however, they’ll be prompted for the password. If they don’t enter the correct password, the file won’t open.

If you want others to be able to see, but not change, the document, leave the Password to open option blank and enter a Password to modify instead. Upon opening the file, other users are prompted for the password to make modifications. If they can’t enter the appropriate password, they can open the document only in read-only mode. This, in turn, prevents them from changing the document.