CHAPTER 9 ■ WORKING WITH OTHERS
Preventing Your Colleagues from Making Any Changes at All Sometimes you may need to prevent your colleagues from making any changes at all to the document. To do so, follow these steps: 1.
Select the “Allow only this type of editing in the document” check box.
2.
In the drop-down list, select the “No changes (Read only)” item. Word displays the Exceptions (optional) section in the Restrict Formatting and Editing task pane.
3.
Use the controls in the Exceptions (optional) area, as discussed next, to specify any parts of the document that people need to be able to edit.
4.
To make the protection take effect, start enforcing it, as discussed later in this chapter.
■ Note If you want to mark a document as final and discourage your colleagues from changing it, choose File ➤ Info, click the Protect Document button, and then click Mark as Final. In the dialog box that opens, click the OK button. When people open the document, they see a warning that you have marked it as final—but if they need to change it, they can remove that marking and edit it.
Adding Exceptions to Your Restrictions When you restrict editing to the Comments setting, the “Filling in forms” setting, or the “No changes (Read only)” setting, you can except specific groups or individuals from the restrictions. Word doesn’t let you make exceptions for Track Changes.
■ Tip Keep your exceptions as simple as possible. For example, you may need to give yourself the freedom to edit the whole document, and perhaps let your boss edit the introduction. But don’t set up a complex structure of different areas that different people and different groups can edit freely—things quickly become complicated, and you undermine the point of imposing the restrictions in the first place.
To add exceptions to your restrictions, first add the groups or individuals you need to the Exceptions list. Follow these steps: 1.
266
Click the “More users” link to display the Add Users dialog window (see Figure 9–16).