How to Encrypt Your Word Documents

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you. Or so my dog tells me. If you share my pet's concern for data security, you'll want to start encrypting your stuff. You could always refer to Rick's guide to How to Encrypt Everything, but honestly, that strikes me as a lot of work.

Instead, I recommend that you pluck the low hanging fruit: Encrypt your Word documents. It's easy and free. In Word 2003, all you have to do is click the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Security.

It's a little different in Word 2007. Start by clicking the Office button (in the upper left corner), point to Prepare, and then click Encrypt Document. Either way, be very, very careful not to forget your password or you'll be rewriting stuff from scratch.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Rick talked about password-protecting your Word documents in a previous post. But he included erroneous Office 2007 instructions, which strikes me as dangerously irresponsible. Good thing I was here to clean up his mistake.