Protect or Encrypt a Document

The main reason to protect or encrypt a document is to apply more control over who can access the document or who can edit it. Applying protection to your documents, you avoid common risks such as copying or modifying documents without permission, as well as data leakage.

Some of the most popular formats when working with documents are Microsoft Word formats or formats that can be exported from Word. That’s why many users are interested in the same document protection options that Microsoft Word provides. Despite the complexity of these options, Aspose.Words supports most of them, so it makes it an excellent solution for working with documents.

This article describes what options Aspose.Words provides for document protection and how these options are presented in the familiar Microsoft Word user interface. In the child articles of the current section, you can learn more about the listed protection functions with all the necessary properties and methods.

Document Protection Options

Aspose.Words currently provides the document features listed in the table below. You can find the details on each of the features in the corresponding child article in the current section.

Aspose.Words protection feature Corresponding child article Corresponding MS Word feature
Read-Only “Open a Document Read-Only” Always Open Read-Only (File → Info → Protect Document)
Alternative feature: “Password to modify” (Save As → Tools → General Options → Password)
Encrypt a Document “Encrypt a Document” Encrypt with Password (File → Info → Protect Document)
Alternative feature: “Password to open” (Save As → Tools → General Options → Password)
Restrict Editing “Restrict Document Editing” Restrict Editing (File – Info – Protect Document)
Alternative feature: “Restrict Editing” (Review → Protect → Restrict Editing)
Digital Signatures “Work with Digital Signatures” Add a Digital Signature (File → Info → Protect Document)

See Also

Working with Document in C# Compare Documents in C#