Microsoft Office is one of the most powerful word processors which is the personal favorite of many authors, and writers and it is used extensively in Office work. Learning to use MS Word is a great idea if you’re going to handle lots of documents at work or for personal use. You might have some confidential data in your documents and that’s why you must know about the way to password-protect Word documents for security reasons. The first that comes to your mind is to dig up some random software to do the job.

However, installing 3rd-party software is not allowed in most of the restricted networks. Moreover, it’s unnecessary to install multiple software on your PC when you have the password protection feature right in MS Word. If you don’t know how to password-protect Microsoft Word documents on your PC, here’s a simple procedure to help you protect your confidential documents.

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How to Password Protect Microsoft Word Document

There are two ways to protect your document in MS Word. Let’s have a look at how to use this password protection feature one by one.

Method 1

  1. Open the document to which you want to add a password and click the “File” tab.
  2. In the “Info” section, click the “Protect Document” button and select “Encrypt with Password” from the drop-down menu.
    protect document settings
  3. “Encrypt Document” dialog box will appear on the screen. Enter a password in the “Password” edit box and click “OK”.
    encrypt a document

    1. Now “Confirm Password” dialog box will appear on the screen. Enter the same password again in the “Re-enter password” edit box and click “OK”.
      password confirmation window
  4. The “Protect Document” section in the “Info” screen will appear highlighted and displays a message “A password is required to open this document“.
    protected word document

Method 2:

  1. Open the document to which you want to add a password and click the “File” tab.
  2. Click on the “Save As” section and select the location of the folder where you want to save the document.
  3. “Save As” dialog box will appear on the screen. Click on the Tools button and select “General Options…” from the drop-down menu.
    settings password for a document
  4. On the “General Options” dialog box, enter a password into the “Password to open” edit box and click “OK”.
    general options to set password
  5. Now “Confirm Password” dialog box will appear on the screen. Enter the same password again in the “Re-enter password” edit box and click “OK”.
    password confirmation
  6. Click on “Save” button to save the document with the password. The next time you open the document Word will ask you for the password before opening the document.

That’s simple, isn’t it?

If you want to remove the password from your Word document, open the document, click on either the “Encrypt Document” dialog box or the “General Options” dialog box, and delete the password. Then, save the document again.

Let us know if you find this tutorial useful. Before you leave, don’t forget to learn how you can use pictures as bullets in Microsoft Word documents.

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