Open a Document Read-Only

Sometimes, you may have a document that needs a review, but you do not want reviewers to randomly modify your content. Aspose.Words allows you to make the permission of your document read-only so that the content can be copied or read, but not modified. This will prevent content from being removed or added to your document.

Applying the read-only option to your document does not prevent someone from creating a new copy of it and saving it with another name.

This article explains how to make a document read-only.

Make a Document Read-Only

Aspose.Words has the public class WriteProtection that specifies write protection settings for a document. You do not create instances of this class directly.

Write protection shows whether the author has recommended opening a document as read-only and/or requiring a password to modify the document.

Aspose.Words allows you to make a document read-only to restrict editing by using the ReadOnlyRecommended property and the SetPassword method.

In Microsoft Word, you can create a Read-Only document in a similar way using both:

• “Always Open Read-Only” (File → Info → Protect Document)
• “Password to modify” (Save As → Tools → General Options → Password)

Users can also restrict document editing by selecting ProtectionType as ReadOnly, but this is another feature that provides more advanced protection capabilities. There is such a function in Microsoft Word, respectively, it is implemented in Aspose.Words.

ProtectionType will be described in detail in one of the following articles – “Restrict Document Editing”.

The ReadOnlyRecommended property is password-secured, so if you do not set a password before applying the ReadOnlyRecommended property, then other users can simply open the document as if it were unprotected. You access the document protection settings and set a write protection password via the SetPassword method.

Note that the password being set is just a property in a document that can be removed if the document properties are accessed. Accordingly, such a password is not a guarantee of the document security.

If you need to check if a document has a write protection password that restricts it from editing, you can use the IsWriteProtected property.

The following code example shows how to make a document read-only:

Remove Read-Only Restriction

If you do not want a user to open your document as read-only, you can simply set the ReadOnlyRecommened property to false or select ProtectionType as NoProtection.

The following code example shows how to remove read-only access for a document: